Earth Day - Friday, April 22

 

My yellow plum tree is in bloom.  You see the English Oak and my hedging cedars at the back, in this photo.

I received my copy of Garden Wise magazine in the mail today.  I was moved by the Editorial by Carol Pope, in particular this paragraph: 

"Planting just one tree, I will be siphoning 100-plus pounds of carbon dioxide from our atmosphere every year and adding back enough oxygen to sustain two people.  This wondrous tree will also recycle water, shelter birds and stretch out to help shade our overheated planet."

In this regard, I am extremely upset with my neighbour, Mrs. P.. insisting that I butcher my trees so that she has no, in her son's words "tree shit" to sweep off of her sidewalk.  

So, yesterday, Pat top our cedars down to eaves height imperiling his life by standing on the deck railing, and also dragging most of the cuttings to the green bin.,

In the meantime, I used the pole pruner to cut back my camillia tree way back from her side walk.  Also dragging all debris to the green bin.

Her son, Bill, was very friendly and helpful in using my pole pruner to butcher the English Oak tree that they claim to be interfering with the laundry on their line.  A few years ago, I had an arborist look at this tree with a view to complying with Mrs. P.'s laundry problem.  The arborist is care taker of a heritage tree on what is now the new Salvation Army property.  This protected tree is an English Oak, planted years ago.  He told me to get my neighbors to move their laundry line and would not touch the tree.
Bill also chimed in with the idea that my plum tree in the front was too low and scraped his van when he drove in.  Now to have this tree touch his van, he must be right over on the edge of his front driveway.  And this never happens, because the van parks in the side driveway, as they live on the corner and have two streets for cement driveways.
Today, Mrs. P.  thought she wanted the part of my cedars that are hanging over her sidewalk trimmed off.  Her grandkids beat the hell out of the bottom 6 feet of these cedars over the years.  They had their hockey net set up in front of the cedars and the children would be chasing the balls through the cedars and under my deck, constantly.  These cedars are no longer a privacy screen at the bottom.  I told her "no" as I had enough of her demands.  She said she would hire someone to do it and I would have to pay her for it.  I said "NO" again.  I told her to take a drive out to Broadmead and see how the rich people treated their trees.  She said "No".  Now, Billy Bob had to get into the act again.. no longer the friendly, helpful neighbor.  This escalated into a most ridiculous rant by him, including telling me she was a 70 year old woman, and what have I done for her?  When asked what he had done for her, he became almost incoherent, using the f word on almost every second word of his rant.  At one point he said to me.. get a job, and live in the real world.  Now this is quite amusing to me, since I am damn near as old as this 70 year old mother, the tree killer.  I had had quite enough of them after awhile and suggested that I would have a survey done to show them that their sidewalk was actually on my property, based on the orientation of a retaining wall that Mr. P. built when they first moved here.  Then the old guy came out and had a look at the wall, and that was the end of the spouting off about the 'tree shit'.  You can see the wall in a couple of the photos above behind the cedars that hang over the sidewalk.  The cedars are not out over the retaining wall line.   But besides all this, I simply do not see their need to worry about a few flowers or tree leaves on the sidewalk.  Their background, I think, is from India.  Now I have seen photos of present day India where there is garbage everywhere.... in the streets, in the rivers, ... and they all seem to think this is fine.   Also Billy Bob has spent his entire life under his parents domination... and his children are now in university and they all endure this pecking order.  I don't think Bill and Gerty even have friends of their own, or a life of their own.  It really is sad. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon sweeping off the deck and the patio, leaving the moss intact.  I like the moss and so does pat.  Its lovely and green in winter and is mostly swept up and gone in summer.  I dragged some of the cedar clippings to the middle of the space under the deck.  This is all clay under here and is quite wet just now.  The ferns and other plants are coming up.  I need to clean up the dry stream and the moss garden.  It shouldn't take much time, as it is fairly clean from last year.  I have 7 bags of compost to use around the beds when I get out to work in them.  Our Spring is about 3 weeks late this year.