Shannon Sessoms has never been so ready for winter. Cold weather brings the promise of several months without awkward sightings of the neighbors whom her family refers to as the Nakeds.

Ms. Sessoms, who lives with her husband and two young children in Harlem, first spotted one of the Nakeds two summers ago while enjoying a glass of wine on her apartment balcony one evening. The balcony overlooks the backyards of several brownstones, and out of the one directly opposite her emerged a 40ish woman with dreadlocks, wearing nothing but a T-shirt.

“I thought, well, maybe she’s running outside to let the cat or dog in,” Ms. Sessoms, 43, said. “But then she started gardening, nude.”

As in shirt gone, completely naked?

“Completely naked,” Ms. Sessoms said.

She yelled for her husband to come look. “He’s like, ‘I don’t want to see my neighbor naked,’ ” she said. “I’m like, ‘No, no, you have to see.’ But by the time he came, she was gone, and he didn’t believe me.”