You know what this is?
This is bullshit. This is garbage. That’s what it is. Our next door neighbors are planning to rip out the huge pine tree in the front of the house. It’s technically on their property but is big enough to shade both houses, and because they don’t want to deal with the hassle of paying someone to trim it anymore, they’re ripping it out on Saturday. An at least 45-year-old tree that is perfectly healthy, by the way, and at the height of summer. That means that the shade will be gone, the green will be gone, the birds will be gone, and any coolness we could hope to have on the front or west side of our house will be gone. All because our neighbor doesn’t want to deal with trimming his fucking tree, and because he met some chainsaw artist who is going to carve the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of the 5-foot stump.
Yeah. We’re going from a mature, healthy, perfectly fine tree to a tacky piece of Italian yard art.
Our neighbor told Graham on Friday that he was having the tree cut down in two weeks, but I guess he’s bad at math and now my plans are ruined. I was going to go over there today and propose paying to have the tree trimmed myself until at least September, at which point he could do whatever he wanted. That way, the summer heat and sun would be gone, and we’d only have to wait a short while longer before (hopefully!) moving to Seattle.
I don’t understand how anyone would want to do that to their property value, although I do watch House Hunters and if that show is any indication, most people know dick about real estate. Larry doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who wants to move and therefore probably doesn’t care about property value, but come on, dude. Aesthetics? Utility bills? Do these things mean nothing to you?
Oh, and the trucks will be here on Saturday, so hey, Larry, thanks for letting me sleep in on the weekend! No, it’s cool, I love it when people bring gigantic machinery right outside my bedroom window on one of the two days a week I get to sleep past 7am. I love it.
Ephemera Etc. 
Uh, oh…I wonder what’s next on Larry and Carmen’s home improvement agenda —- an ugly above-ground pool surrounded by tiki torches?
No, thank god. He’s a K-9 cop who uses his yard to train and exercise the dog every day. Thank god. Thank god. Thank god.
Dick. (Really? The Leaning Tower?) That won’t end well.
Other than this incident, he’s been a really nice neighbor. I just wish they would have employed some goddamn sense when it came to removing a major source of shade in the middle of the summer, as well as a major source of non-ugliness in general.
Plus, I’m no tree-hugging hippie, but it seems…wrong to cut it down when it’s mature and healthy.
I feel your pain. In front of our house were 2 large maple trees. These trees are higher than our 3 story house. Beautiful. Provided tons of shade in summer and tons of leaves in fall. Recently our borough decided to redo all the curbs. During the replacement of one curb a rather large tree was disturbed by what they were doing and fell causing some damage. The homeowner felt they shouldn’t have to pay and neither did the borough, so to insure no further issues like that they basically told the homeowners that if it’s determined the tree has a good chance of falling while repairing the curb, then they need to have it cut down or they will have to assume any financial responsibility for any damage. So of course my neighbor opted to have his cut down. Which took away a good portion of our shade. Plus it just killed me to see such a beautiful grown tree that has been there probably longer than any of us, gone just like that.