Picket Fences

I've had an interesting week of neighbourly encounters. First up, I found in the backyard some broken branches from the insane tree that's growing. When I first moved in over 2 years ago, the tree was just a spindly shrub barely 1 feet high. It's now a towering 10 feet tree with beautiful umbrella like branches which unfortunately tend to extend into my neighbours 'delicate' back porch. Thus the broken tree branches left on my side of the backyard like Mafia style warnings.

So in the interest of neighbourly relations, I chopped the entire tree down and my frumpy grumpy neighbour is now all smiles. I guess the centimetre long invasion into the airspace by my tree threatened her sovereignity. People can be quite possesive at times (myself included) so like I said, in the best interest of everyone, a tree is now dead.

Then there's this other neighbour, the one with the biggest most renovated house on the block who wants to build gates at the entrances to the back road. Given the 'recent rise' in crime and the 'threat to safety and belongings', the gates are 'necessary' and since its in shared interest, we should all chip in.

I don't know about you guys but the only ones to gain here are the ones with most to lose. Given that, dividing the cost 'evenly' is practical but somewhat unjustified so I decided to pay nothing.

I do live in a nice neighbourhood but people with high walls and big gates do not nice neighbours make.