Pleasing The Neighbours

I gave access to my back yard to a neighbour on one side, to bring in the arborist to prune the giant tree that is in their back yard, to appease a neighbour on the other side who felt threatened by the tree's branches hanging over our gardens.

The first neighbour and I scoffed about the tree being a threat to anyone. But the second neighbour had some sort of paranoid nonsense about fearing for the life of her child because of the tree.

The first neighbour and I laughed.

"Her five year old daughter?"

"She thinks a branch is somehow going fling itself over into her yard."

"And land on her kid?"

"Yes."

"It's just magical thinking, the tree barely makes it to her property."

"I know."

"Why are people so paranoid now a days?"

"Why are people so self focused?"

We both laughed some more.

So the arborists duly arrived. The main guy was a big strapping guy who said he was happy to do anything asked of him. The two workers were buzz-cut blonds and muscular types who shimmied up those ropes like monkeys. And, looking at them from that angle...

They cut and they sawed and they had a machine that chewed up the branches. They were up and down those ropes continually.

Then they were gone without a word about them being finished. No mention about closing my roller door. And the mess, fuck me. Some of my pot plants were broken. Some of my creeper was torn down. And there were limbs of branches stuck in bushes and a multitude of smaller pieces lying over the paving.

Grrr!

I gave them access to my yard to chop down the branches from the tree to appeased some moron who is clearly in no real danger of anything other than her own stupidity with me ending up with an almighty mess to clean up.

Seriously? Who is the moron here?

I'm not doing that again, I muttered to myself as Otto and I cleaned up the mess in the morning sun. She can live in imagined fear under the tree. Jasus! Otto leapt about grabbing the broom as I tried to sweep, until I gave him a big stick to chew on.

I had music on my headphones, it was a sunny morning. I got half way through the cleanup, I must go out and finish it at some point.