...who sinned against nature and broke your friggen heart...well, I have...

I live in a second floor apt across from a residential area...I see lots of stuff (including the dress habits of the high school kids next door...fascinating).

Several years ago, the neighbor across the street....it was two apple trees...in his front yard...beautifully conformed, fruit bearing. One day he cut every single damn limb off, leaving a trunk and stubs. Damn near broke my heart. The trees died (of course) and he left them for two years before he put them (and me) out of our misery.

I figured...temporary insanity...and I guess I will just have to live with it. But, OH NO...next there were three bushes in front of his house...really set the place off, I USED to admire them. Apparently he DIDN'T...because one day I observed him butchering all three. Each was round, and tall, and also beautifully conformed. He cut everything except the tops, leaving  scraggly bushes, bare assed and ugly with all the trunks exposed...what he was thinking I cannot even imagine.
Made his house look, well, shitty...

Again, with less conviction, I figured temporary? insanity. That was disproved as I watched him prune what was left (3 x per week) into skeletons of bushes.

Now, I'm a resilient guy (hey, clusterhead doncha know)...and I can deal with most anything. Worked this out in my head, UNTIL he next chopped down two evergreens at the front and back of his property. 30-40 ' bushy trees that would not have blown down in any hurricane...did not pose a threat to any building whatsoever...simply just were. Beautiful 30-40 yr old trees. There in the morning, gone by the afternoon. I was too shocked to cry...but I have rarely been more
incredulous.

At this point, NOTHING he did would surprise me, even though there were few living things left to desecrate. That is, except the 20' bush at the left of his property that is the absolute (summer blooming) jewel. I figured not even this knothead would be so foolish as to touch THAT one...WRONG!

He has now cut away many (I pray not all eventually) the base branches, and left it barren at the bottom and less than the beauty it was.

Not sure what I'm saying here, or asking, and what a man does with his own property is his own business, and really none of mine...just wanted to get it off my chest...I am heartsick and just needed to share the outrage. Ignore or delete, your choice, just wish I had the same...SIGH...SIGH...SIGH!

Jon

  The people who moved in across the street from me in 96 lived there for 5 months before they found out that my house was across the street. I never cut down the Pines and Cedars, and just planted things I liked. Wild Rhodies, Huckle Berries and stuff. Never planned it. I just like the things. Some people on the other hand don't.
[smiley=smokin.gif]

What a fucking idiot. >:(

I just don't get some people.  >:(  What did those trees and shrubs ever do to him to derserve that?

My nieghbors hve a very small pond that is only 5' deep.  They did have it stocked with fish.  Almost every day in the summer the wife is outside throwing copper sulfate in the pond to the piont that the pond was blue.  The poor fish were oxygen deprived and started dying.  Ponds are not supposed to be blue, but they thought it made the water pretty.  Grrrrr  WTF is wrong with people??

[quote]WTF is wrong with people[quote]

Beats me. My old neighbor next door had some of the fanciest and most beautiful pruned and cared for bushes and trees on the block. It was stunning. Just beautiful stuff. When he moved, the new moron cut everything front and back leaving one little bush on a corner. He did put in a gravel driveway next to the concrete one..lovely..

When the city decided to cut down a lot of trees because of power cable problems, I talked then into leaving my old locust by having them cut a big "c" for the line. My new neighbor then offered more than once to cut off that part of the tree. He loved his chainsaw. I told him to keep it on his side of the border.

Now I have new neighbors there that asked me WTF did the idiots cut down all the shrubs and leave a bare foundation. As I said: Beats me. The new ones are planting new stuff every day and Cindy is planting beautiful stuff too. It's going to be great...

In several areas of town, I see people either cutting down bushes or not putting them in. Mostly younger families. Bare foundations might be some kind of fad but it looks like a war zone.

Anyway, I know how you feel.

Charlie

Yup, I know what you mean ... a house down the street had a nice lawn and a 10' citrus tree (pomello or some such), which was bearing 30 large fruits a year. New owners cut down the tree to a 2 foot stump (which killed it).  That surprised me, but I thought that maybe they were going to do something creative ... nah, it was the first step in their plan to let the whole property go to seed.

....sigh....

hug a root wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2009 at 1:16pm:

....sigh....

Good to see that we are attracting new members ... and the right kind of members. LOL!

i bought this house i'm in from my wifes grandmother back in '05. all the trees in my yard my wifes grandfather planted between 1952 and 1978 when he died. i don't know shit about trees other than i like them. one tree in particular is around 80' tall a 4' in diameter. my wife wanted me to cut it down cuz the buds fall on the cars in the spring time. as if. out in the back yard the old man had 3 apple trees. since i drive otr i never had the time to work on them. every winter that passed more and more of these trees would break off. finally i had too cut them down. when i did i found the inside of them were ate up by ants and bumble bees.

i had one nice pine tree in the back yard but ice toke out most of it one year and i had to do the rest.

in short. i don't cut my trees down until mother nature tells me its time. to me it just seems like bad karma to cut down a healthy tree

OK, try this one.... when we sold Mom's house, we had to partition, which meant, half of it was deeded to her, half for us(her house was in back of ours. We never had a problem, shared a yard, shared a gardener)....now, the new owners are there. They have fenced(to keep us off their property), and the entire place is going to seed! In order to put his fence up, he tore a 100+ yr old Lilac, easily 15 ft tall, 20'circumference...........THEN, he took 7 cars and parked them on her lawn(only 3 are licensed and working), and after a 4th of July party they held, the red white and blue debris is still all over the yard-which happens to be OUR view now, from our deck!
I cannot sell our house..... wonder why???
It's a flipping eyesore!!!!
I'm in contact with our bank.ready to cut our losses and move on.
Can you say short sale??

Personally, I hate neighbors.........

Cathi >:(

I'm not a "tree hugger", but I love the beauty of trees and shrubs and the shade they provide.  

We bought our house in 2001.  It's a 70's brick ranch sitting on one acre of trees.  The original owner who built the house was a wonderful lady with an absolutely green thumb.  She planted flower gardens everywhere, azaleas and rhododendrons, peony bushes, bulbs everywhere, a rose garden and a border plant along the sidewalk that we couldn't identify but was pretty.  These turned out to be called a Christmas rose.  She also had a doggie cemetery  (5 dogs)complete with headstones in the backyard ( they are still there although we politely covered them with grass).

We had no idea of any of this because the owner we bought the house from was the second owner and he literally did nothing in the yard, or in the house, for that matter, and everything was completely overgrown - no blooming flowers or bushes, just downed trees and limbs.

Over the years, we've cleaned up the undergrowth under the oak trees, getting rid of scrub pines, new little baby oaks, fallen limbs.  We trimmed back the azalea "wall" that had been allowed to just go wild, cut the dead off the rhododendrons, and are now seeing the results.  It's amazing!  We have color all year around between the various plants.  We have blooming dogwood and mimosa trees as our growth under the tall oaks.

It's a lot of work - especially in the fall when all those oaks drop their leaves (that's Tarey's job  ;)) - we blow all of them back under the trees - almost the entire front yard is a "natural" area, but it has been worth it.

Frankly, I don't understand anyone buying a house that has a yard unless they are willing to take care of it.  And, don't get me started on the developers who buy acres of lovely wooded property, completely strip (rape) the land of every living tree and shrub to build the houses, then plant a scrawny tree in the front yard.    Where's my shotgun?  [smiley=bigguns.gif]

Sandy

I like trees too...except when I have to haul them to the street after a storm.

Steve G

---

stevegeebe wrote on Jul 24^th, 2009 at 11:17pm:

I like trees too...except when I have to haul them to the street after a storm. Steve G

damn. thats a couple truck loads of good firewood. every thing that was once alive and isn't anymore plant wise goes on the burn pile out back or is harvested for my wood burning furnace. due to all the tree lines between fields my neighbor and i do pretty well with keeping our homes heated in the winter. neither one of us have one of them there non wood burning furnaces ya'll city folks use.

Believe me Johnny, we were heart-broken to have lost so many of the big pines. Most were over fifty years old and 110' feet tall.

Most folks had big equipment come into their property and remove the fallen trees which regretfully resulted in additional damage to the trees that survived. We elected to cut them up into manageable pieces and hand-truck them out.

We also split many for use in the back yard fire pit and started a cold weather tradition of the Friday night bonfire. We still have some left which will likely be used up this Winter.

We also have planted ornamentals in the hollow spots and have enacted a policy of leaving new sprouts to themselves to replace the forest for the future.

Two observation of note are, one; with a lot of the upper canopy gone, the understory trees are growing like crazy and, two; nature does not care about how long it may take to replenish the forest. The Spring after the storm the surviving trees went into massive seed production. New sprouts are popping up everywhere. The tenacity of nature, if left to itself, will win out in her own sweet time.

BTW, that photo is one of two such roadside deposits. FEMA took that one away before I could make one really big stack.

We love the trees.

Steve G

Sounds like the guy has OCD, just a guess. Most folks that have it, can do things of that nature, they can't help it.

Wellll, as someone once said, 'ya just can't cure STUPID!"

Hugs BD :-*

Quote:

If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey