The Tree, The Tree

The story of The Tree is a relatively long one, but I'll try to edit it down.

It started when Marc and I bought the house. We had a potted live "Christmas Tree" that we had had for a few years. There was a nice spot where an old, diseased willow tree had been cut down some years before, so I planted The Tree right in the middle of the stump. My plan was to let it grow up to a height where I could still manage cutting it down when it got too big, but what with a few setbacks, I was unable to cut it down at the time I had planned.

A large part of the reason was my new neighbor, Debbie, a 40-ish, skinny, thin-haired Brit who sport every cliche you can imagine to describe a Brit. Dour, mean-spirited, with absolutely no social graces. This woman would have been charred had she lived in The South.

Oddly enough, she is an emergency room nurse, so perhaps her behavior towards me is a result of pent up anxiety from a stressful job. Maybe she thinks it is acceptable to "kick the dog" (me) when she gets a little to much backlogged anger. Well, I had enough of that growing up, so she is looking toward the wrong person to interact on that level.

Things were bad enough after she moved in with her complaining about every little thing she didn't like about my yard. She actually suggested that my landscaping (I'm a master gardener and sculptor) was unacceptable to her and that I should adopt her style, you know, the typical English Garden where the owner battles nature at every turn. I'd sooner die than have a garden like hers. Now, my neighbor on the side feels pretty much the same way about the way I garden, but they don't understand what they have here. Other neighbors LOVE me because of my garden, knowing that the way I have added plants and changed things actually increased the value of their property. The other two, well.... not so much.

Come forward a couple of years. My husband, Marc, and I had split up, with a resulting financial crunch for me that made it impossible for me to do a lot of the strenuous work on the garden alone, which was how I had gardened in the past. I couldn't afford even a couple of laborers to help for quite awhile. I had already painted the exterior of my entire house over the first year after Marc moved out. Some of the big-time gardening, like cutting down The Tree, simply had to wait.

At that time, about 2 years ago, there was an argument between two of my other neighbors, they live adjacent to Debbie and me. Audie, a 60-something Genius Gardener and landscaper had begged and begged the other neighbors, the Two Dees to remove some materials that they had stored outside their fence that were truly an eyesore. Now Audie couldn't see this stuff from inside her fence, but when you start talking about car parts leaning against the fence, red yet, it's time for a little pow-wow amongst neighbors with everyone on their best behavior, with a mind focused on compromise and negotiation.

The Two Dees claimed that their property line reached all the way over the creek (more of a large drainage ditch really) to Audie's fence. The Man Dee told me about all this, so I took it upon myself to go down to the City to determine the truth for myself. Man Dee was wrong. In a strange turn of events beyond our control, it seemed that the property line was the other way around. Audie's (and therefore, Debbie's) property lines ran across the creek and ended just outside The Two Dee's and my fencelines. This is very odd. Normally, property lines will follow a landmark, like a creek, with the owner on each side of the creek owning into the middle of the creekbed. But I checked it and Man Dee was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Two Dees and I have had an ongoing disagreement about handling an enormous sycamore tree in their yard that extends far over my property (and Audie's), cutting off a lot of the available sun and constantly dropped leaves and branchs all over the area. Man Dee and I are very allergic to the sycamore. Sycamores are very pretty trees that are known for the debris they generate. They are really considered "junk trees", sort of like privets (several of which The Two Dees also have on their property, which annually sprinkle privets babies around the entire neighborhood. Toss in the car parts and now Audie, who I know from personal experience had been very tolerant about the sun and debris issues, finally gave them an ultimatium about the car parts. She would've been happy with just that. Take away the car parts and there you have it. But NOOoooooo.....!!!!! The Two Dees drew a line in the sand, or in this case, dirt, and refused to removed these ugly materials.

I told them, point blank, that they were wrong about the property lines, but Man Dee stood me down and the next thing I knew, Audie was having a surveyor plot the property line. BINGO. Audie and I proved to be right about the fence line and the issue became bigger. Now Debbie realized that the area which she had thought was mine, was actually hers. Fine by me, I thought. It was just more backbreaking work for me to keep up the creeside, which has the usual problems with invasive plants of various kinds.

There were several, very nasty confrontations with Debbie. She was furious that, when I realized where the property line actually was, I didn't inform her. I asked her when I would've done that, since she and I have not had one pleasant or even civil conversation since the first month she moved in. She had claimed to be "a gardener", but proved to be the owner of a garden, not a gardener. She bemoaned the loss of her previous garden which the new owner had allowed to descend into disrepair, according to Debbie. When I told her that I was planning to cut down The Tree because it was leaning too far over, having been planted in The Worst place possible to provide the needed stability. Oh NOOOOO, she moaned. She loved that tree and didn't want me to cut it down. So I wasn't in any hurry to cut it. She claimed at that time that she loved the tree and the shade and privacy it provided her. After I had so many nasty confrontations about my own garden with her, I began to wonder if her old garden had simply been altered in a fashion of which she disapproved. She apparently didn't realize that The Tree was going to grow. Up and out.

She ranted, she raved! WHY had I not told her about the property line, after all, SHE "has (d) a life", implying that I didn't, so I had an extra responsibility to watch out after her life for her.

I asked her exactly when, since we never spoke to each other, I would have been expected to have told her. I suggested that we never talked and I didn't see that I had any responsibility to tell her anything. Everything I had ever said to her was promptly cut down severely, as though I knew nothing about landscape design or gardening. BAH. She even suggested that she was "paying taxes on that land", not realizing that tax rates here in California are based, not on the size of the plot of land, but on the sales price. But she wouldn't listen to me. She just ranted and raved.

The next thing you know, she was complaining about The Tree now. Parroting what I knew to be the attitude of Audie about the big sycamore tree and the blocking of the sun on her carefully tended property, she claimed that the tree was cutting out her sun. There was nothing back there at the time, so I knew, one again, this was no gardener.

So I, being in the financial straits I was in, left the tree there. She immediately wanted to work on the creeksides, installing several shrubs that she obviously chose to give her the best screen between her property and mine. I asked her to wait to install these plants until after I had cut down the tree, which she now complained about every time we found ourselves facing each other in our backyards.

Fast forward till now. I had saved up enough money to get my friend and pruning genius to help me cut it down. Even Marc donated some money and time on the project. It couldn't have gone any better. Every time I winced, thinking that my friend, Kirk, said pruning genius, had cut a limb and possibly damaged her plants, I quickly realized that the loose and small branches and pine needles were doing very little damage to the shrubs, only breaking a few (maybe 10) small branches on the shrubs, which were honestly none the worse for the wear.

Marc left to meet his friend for dinner and some music while Kirk and I talked. I gave him a haircut. He had worked so hard on the pruning and tree removal, I wanted to do something to take care of him, the way he had taken care of me in removing the tree. I was so excited. I have been wanting to cut down The Tree for about 6 or 7 years. It was done. And done beautifully. The limbs and branches were down in the bottom of the creek, nicely cut up into manageably-sized pieces, with no damage at all to any of Debbie's plants. Wow. I felt like I had had a great haircut or a pedicure. I was feeling all new and fresh, the The Tree now gone. Debbie was obviously going to be very happy to have the tree gone and with no damage done to her plants.

As I walked Kirk to his van, Debbie's daughter came walking down the sidewalk with a nasty little smirk on her face. She was obviously upset and tense. She asked me if I was planning to remove the tree parts in the creekbed. I laughed and said, "No, I'm planning to leave them right there." She did seem to realize that I was kidding, but said that there was 'extensive' damage to their rock wall and plants and that they expected me to remove the remaining tree parts by the end of tomorrow, Sunday that would be.

That, of course, wouldn't fly in The South, where I was raised. No one does major work on a Sunday, church-goer or not. Some serious Christians won't even go to a movie on a Sunday.

I told her that I needed help to remove the tree parts and that I wasn't sure when that might happen. She said something indistinct about it needing to be done immediately and turned around to leave. As she walked away, I said to her, "You know, your mother wanted that tree cut down." She paid me no attention and continued walking away. I called out, "you know the creekbed is a right of way and not your property." I don't know if she responded or not. She was, be now, out of (at least) my ear-range.

I decided I'd best get down there to see what kind of situation I was in (damage to the rock wall and plants?).....

Kirk had, as he would have, being the tree artiste he is, cut up the big limbs and branches into manageable bits and even neatly stacked them up alongside the creekside. There was nothing wrong at all with the rocks on either side of the creekbed. I'm not sure what this young woman was talking about. But, in an attempt to show good faith, I spent about a half hour moving some of the tree bits into a better location for removal from the scene, until 8PM, which is way past my best productivity. And that was that. I have permission from Audie to use a teeny bit of her land to access the creekbed, so I am not tresspassing on their land. They can just wait until I am in the mood to remove the rest of it. I might have been more inclined to get it out fast, had this moody child not confronted me when she has no legal leg to stand on, just more of the same old, same old grousing about their dissatisfaction with what they see in my yard. I have tactfully suggested that she install another fence if what she sees in my yard upsets her so, but she so far has chosen not to. Of course, I know that she is unable to do so without using my land, which I now will never allow. I'm just glad that I will never have to encounter her in the ER where she works. Sometimes, no action is the best revenge.