There's something not nice going on with the trees. Really tall pine trees and parts of them have started dying. There were a lot of things that went through our minds, the neighbors poisoning them was one of the first, since the worst are the ones on the property line, but the ones in front of the house have no problems at all. And it appeared that all of the trees that are in the backyard didn't have any problems. Just those three on the property line. But when we noticed the smallest of them in the backyard, the very last one in the line, was doing poorly, I came up with the idea that maybe it's not poison, but lack of water (because of the drought and the rising cost of water, we've cut way back).
Brian bought some things that you put into the trees to kill beetles, in case there are any, and the trees have been getting a lot more water than they had been. And they seem to be responding. But there's still the matter of all of the dead stuff at the top. We don't see it much on this side, but as you come down the street, on the other side, where the asshole neighbors live, it's pretty bad. I haven't had much use for either of them since we came home from dinner at my in-laws one Thanksgiving to find Junior drenched to the bone - they'd hosed him, probably because he'd been barking; and he learned this behavior because of their grandson who used to come out to the fence and yell at the dogs, kick the fence and throw things at them. I quit talking to her when everytime we had a conversation, she's start in on me about the trees. I always responded to talk to Brian about it, but she kept after me. She's a slow learner I guess, but she's one helluva nag. I liked the time when Brian was putting up the wood fence when they were dogsitting for their daughter and the dogs rushed the fence, scaring the crap out of Marco, he fell from the retaining wall and broke his hip. Two thousand dollars at the vet to get it taken care of and eight weeks in a crate.
Brian gets wood and puts up a wooden fence so that the dogs (or anyone in their yard, for that matter) can't see into ours. Brian at first was going to attach the wood to the chain link and Mr. Asshole says "you can't do that, the fence won't bear the weight, besides it's my fence and I don't want you attaching to it". (They didn't install the fencing, it was there when they moved in.) Okay, explain this then. Why are all of the poles that the fencing attaches to on OUR side of the fence? But Brian didn't say a word, he just went down to Home Depot and bought wood that he'd just build the fence as if there was nothing there. Well, Mrs. Nagatha Asshole comes out and starts screeching at Brian "my view! my view! what about my view?" and then asks Brian "well, are you going to cut down the trees?" Brian and Mr Asshole had discussed why this was being done and Mr Asshole's comment was "well, the did the dogs hurt your cats?" (My head voice was shouting "no, you stupid fuck, but they rushed the fence and our cats didn't know what they were going to do, it was new to them, and it scared the crap out of them and ended up costing us a buttload of money." My head voice loves expletives.)
(Yeah, all of this time I was in the extra room, listening, amazed that Brian was so calm.)
Finally Mr Asshole said "Nagatha" (that's what I call his wife) "Go in the house, Nagatha"... and Mrs Asshole went inside.
So, a couple of weeks ago we get a thing in the mail that the company that carries our homeowner's insurance wants to come take pictures of the house, inside and out. Brian's nervous that because of the dead part on the trees, there will be a problem. And he contacted the guy who stopped by last December. "It's time to do something about the trees." And then he tells me "I hate to bring this up, but we're going to need to sell some of our stock to pay for this". I was hoping we could skip a year (every year since he quit the glass business we sell some stock - our retirement money), but it needs to be done.
All of the cats are inside and the cat doors are blocked. Rocky is already going nuts and it's only been fifteen minutes. I'm sure once they start working, he'll be happy to be inside (he's not happy with strangers, he learned Stranger Danger well in kitty school). And because of Rocky, the catdoor in the garage is locked for in and out, a baby gate is in front of that and there are two #38 containers pushed against the baby gate. In the laundry room, the door is locked for in and out, a big heavy litterbox is in front of that and I've got the lid to the litterbox (we use Sterlite containers) is between the door and the litterbox. Getting out will take some work. Oh, and the backdoor is locked so no one accidentally opens it to get into the house.
Brian put out a cooler with lots of ice and bottles of water for the workers. I need to clean the bathroom, because you never know if someone has to potty.
This is going to take a couple of days because the guys are climbing the trees to do the work, no equipment was rented.
The workers are here. Keep us in your thoughts that all goes smoothly.
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