6/27/2007

In which I get RELIEF!!!

This is what I saw when I came home for lunch today.

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What do you think this could be?? Hmmm??!! :) :) :)

Anyone have any ideas?

Oh, my! Look at this!

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And this!

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This thing's been threatening to fall on my tree fern for two years.

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Hopefully they'll take it off the house.

More news later today. Right now I have to go investigate some more.

ADDED: Before I went back to work I snapped this picture of imminent doom hanging over the corner of the garden.

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I didn't think there was anything practical the unskilled laborers he hired could have done to avoid potential damage my yard, so I just went back to work.

When I came home:

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One of them came over and help me push the bulk of it back over the fence. I lost the cineraria for the rest of the year. No biggie; they're semi-deciduous perennials whose season is winding down this time of year.

The Fuchsia boliviana 'Alba' got all pushed out of shape, but I think she'll be fine. Maybe she'll even be more interesting now.

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I'm going to leave the light debris to decompose in place.

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Since it was a hard day, I gave everyone some supplemental water, and that was that.

Oh, and dude made an appearance. "I wish you'd told me instead of going to the city. I wasn't aware..." Like that's a defense. I told him we never see him and we think he's weird and negligent to let his house fall into such disrepair. He kept saying "I wasn't aware...I didn't know." He's an able-bodied person. He should know. If he doesn't know the kinds of very basic things a property owner ought to know, it's not my responsibility to inform him, and my going to the city seems likely to be the very least of his troubles. I just snapped a bunch of pictures and went inside.

Guy just e-mailed this: "He actually has some nerve to say he 'was unaware'. It's impossible to be that unaware. At least he knows we won't tolerate it."

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The winter garden will be so different this year; I'll have much more light. This is my new southern exposure.

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(What's this all about? Link.)

11 comments:

LostRoses said...

Wonder what moved the guy to do this, since he's been "unaware" all along? That's a good line, I'm going to try it at work.

You're certainly taking this all in stride and the end result can only be good for your garden!

chuck b. said...

I know--in the long run, even in the short run, it's going to be great.

He took action because Guy called the Dept. of Public Health about the rats and mosquitoes, and they threatened legal action if he didn't clean up. (discussed here: http://coldcalculation.blogspot.com/2007/06/update-on-trespassing.html)

I hope noone thinks I'm *proud* we deployed the power of the state against him, but considering his denial (lies) about the magnitude of the situation, "talking it over" does not seem like a worthwhile strategy, even with hindsight.

lisa said...

You guys absolutely did the right thing! Unaware?! Clearly this person needed assistence extracting his cranium from his rectum, and that kind of procedure requires professionals! ;-)

JvA said...

You may not be proud that you deployed the power of the state against him, but I'm certainly proud of you for doing so.

Christopher C. NC said...

Procrastination isn't always pleasant, particularly when someone else is doing it. You nudged Dude. He needed a nudge.

Carol Michel said...

I think it is great that he is finally getting it all cleaned up.
Did you ever look up Grey Gardens?

JvA said...

Chuck -- Speaking of weird neighbors, do you think it was my Dude who just posted a "Some people are to be pitied" comment on my three-month-old post about my foliage dispute?

http://midbeaconhill.blogspot.com/2007/04/arborvitae-are-gone.html

The syntax ("You cause alot of trouble for nothing") reminds me of the way he spoke to us in person ("You touch those plants, I sue you").

So mysterious! I feel like a real blogger, now that I have a nasty comment!

chuck b. said...

I turned anonymous comments off on my blog when I started getting in to some weird shit with my neighbor. People can think what they want, but they need to have some balls if they want to say something nasty about it. Not that non-anonymous comments leave much of a trail, but it's something.

Personally, if I were you, I would delete that comment. You had a solid legal right to have those trees removed. Whining from the peanut gallery is just that. Fuck 'em.

chuck b. said...

Also, if you want some information about who's visiting your blog, you can install SiteMeter. Most of the time you get domain names and ISPs, among other things. I don't check mine very often, but it might be nice to have if you are concerned about it.

I doubt it was your neighbor, I think it was just a troll. I hope he didn't come from my blog! :)

JvA said...

Thanks for the advice, Chuck.

I tend to think it WAS my neighbor. The writing matches his speech (assume he's a native Cantonese or Mandarin speaker). Also, that post is now buried so deep in my blog that it doesn't seem likely that some random troll would run across it. Some random troll would have said something even nastier about a more recent post, I would think.

I kind of hope it was my neighbor, actually.

chuck b. said...

That's a good point, but it is very easy to surf or Google one's way deep into a blog.