Bone In The Throat

I honestly don’t know what the fuck is wrong with people but I’m so over it.

I’m spitting nails and perhaps I’m over reacting. But FUCK!

Way back when Jerry & I moved into the house after the fire. We’d had the fence replaced so the pups could run around in their yard. The fence was bright and shiny, it looked sterile as all galvanized fences look when they’re new. This was the second fence we’d paid for and installed on our property.

By on our property, I mean we’d made sure that the fence was well within our property lines because we didn’t want to have any issues down the road. We literally had the property surveyed twice! Once, when the house was being rebuilt, and the second time, just before the fencing guys came in and reinstalled the fucking fence.

We had a neighbor that didn’t do or like fences at the time, but she understood and agreed that the pups needed a place to run and play where they couldn’t get hurt.

She died. There there was the meth head rental lady. Then there was the cute couple who during the pregnancy with their second child installed a monstrosity of a badly constructed wooden fence. (She kinda went nuts because at the time, the county was widening the wash, in the name of flood control and that forced anyone walking to be close to their property line. She was in momma bear protective mode and was super fearful of someone coming up and taking one of the kids. Likelihood of that was somewhere around .0001% but she would not be dissuaded and eventually her husband capitulated, even though he hated the wooden fence she made him install.) Shortly after they had their second child they sold the place and moved. Leaving behind the poorly built wooden monstrosity. Another couple moved in, they stayed a few years then he was transferred to New Mexico and they moved.

That brings us to the guy currently next door. Honestly, I’ve tolerated him. I’ve always thought he was a bit too arrogant and he always loves to correct anyone. In fact he corrected me during a fire evacuation when I’d taken the time from the road to inform everyone on the neighbor group chat that the primary evacuation route had been closed and that everyone was being turned around to the alternate route. At the time I was literally sitting in traffic on the alternate route and said so in the chat.

But Jerry who I was talking to on the phone at the time because we always remained in communication during an evacuation saw the text and immediately said, “Be nice. Everyone is stressed.” I should have let this guy have it right then and there, but in deference to Jerry I kept my mouth shut.

Anyway, In all the time not one person said a damn thing about the grape vines that Jerry liked and had me plant along the inside of our fence. We tended the vines and every once in a while we’d get a bunch of grapes.

Truth to tell, we spent more in water than the vines ever produced. But Jerry liked the vines and as they spread out along the fence, they softened the fence line and made for a cool shady spot for the pups to relax in.

At the time we planted the grapes, we also planted an overly ambitious apple tree. By overly ambitious, I mean that tree produced apples from the first year. In fact we had to remove some of the apples long before they were ripe because the tree had bent over from the weight.

The past 3 years the grape vine has spread a little bit along the fence and in all 3 years it’s produced some small but very tasty grapes.

There’s a narrow walkway between the fence and my neighbor’s house. He has a gate through the wooden monstrosity of a fence and while he rarely uses that gate, occasionally one of the grape vines will send a tendril out towards the gate. When I’ve seen that happening I’ve trimmed the tendril, or threaded it back through my fence allowing it to grow and in time soften more of the fence line.

Typically, I’ll do this once or twice in a summer, but due to the possibility of snakes taking up residence in the space between the fence and this guy’s house, I’ve also weed whacked the zone. It’s not a big deal for me, it helps him out, and I don’t have to worry about the dog getting bitten by a snake.

A couple of weeks ago he mentioned that he wanted to trim the grape vine on his side of the fence and I thought nothing of it. I figured he’d use his fucking brain and just trim it like a hedge. That wouldn’t hurt the plant so I said, “sure whatever”

This week I noticed that the vines were dying off running the length of my fence. At first I thought, “Well it’s fall and that’s pretty normal.” I went ahead and started giving the vine more water so that It could go to sleep for the winter.

The die off continued. Today I was outside and noticed only the vines extending along the fence were dying off. The central plant was still green and vibrant. “That’s odd,” I thought. Then I examined more closely.

That moronic son of a bitch had cut the vines wrapped through the fucking fence! Then to make matters worse in typical liberal democrat fashion had just left them there to die.

I say typical liberal democrat because A) He is a Hollywood liberal democrat leftist (he’s a voice actor) and B) because that’s so leftist, “Make a mess and expect someone else to clean it up”

I spent the next 45 minutes removing all the formerly productive (grape bearing,) now dying parts of the vine that I’d been training through my fence for literally years.

I don’t know if the plant will survive. It’s going into its winter sleep and without the leaves and additional energy it might not survive the winter because now it’s trying to heal itself and go into winter sleep.

This jackass destroyed a decade of growth and I’m doubting that I’ll get any grapes next year. He did this to a plant growing on my fucking fence. Typically once the plant has gone to sleep, I’ll trim and prune the older dead branches so that when the plant wakes up I’ll get new growth.

I was talking to my brother on the phone when I discovered this while I was cleaning up the mess I’d been left with. My brother who’s not a plant person but had seen the vines was understanding that I’d be pissed off.

He was blown away that someone would do something like that in the first place then leave it like it was nothing.

His response was the usual for him. “Well that’s fucking Californians for you.” Then he asked if I lived in an HOA community, which I don’t. When I told him that, he said just wait for it, that neighbor is probably going to try to start one.

He sold his place in Florida because the HOA wouldn’t let him plant a couple of trees in his fenced in back yard. The HOA made him get rid of potted tomato plants he was growing on his upstairs front deck. They didn’t like the aesthetics of the plants being on the upper deck and then kept hounding him about the plants after he moved them downstairs to his back deck inside a fenced yard. The HOA went so far as to forbid any “food plants” from the community.

His revenge was to find a field of dandelions and collect their seeds plus a ton of crabgrass then liberally distribute both throughout the community, 5 days before the sale of his house closed in springtime. With spring rains in northern Florida I’m betting they’ll have to tear out and re – sod the whole community.

That’s the kind of fuckers we are.

As I said he’s not a plant guy, but he likes tomatoes.

(As an aside, he’s laughing his ass off that DeSantis is likely to sign a law that makes HOAs illegal in Florida.)

I’m furious about what this neighbor did to my grape vine. There are a lot of layers to it.

1. It’s a plant on my property
2. it was growing on a fence on my property
3. It was a plant Jerry liked
4. It provided a cool shady spot for Jesse
5. It represented 10 years of work and nurturing
6. The plant had just consistently begun to provide grapes
7. I’d actually offered to share the grapes with the fucking neighbor. (It’s not my fault he didn’t get his ass out there to harvest grapes before the birds & squirrels got to them. I had plenty.)
8. That vine gave me some green along the fence that brought me a sense of peace because in the midst of a mostly grey landscape, (Unless you looked at or walked through the forest above us,) there was a deep green that I enjoyed whenever I was out there.

I guess I feel violated.

This guy has literally removed all of the natural plants from his yard. While overgrown he could simply have trimmed them back. He’s also pretty much destroyed the beautiful Japanese maple that was growing for years in his back yard. That tree was green and watching it change with the seasons was amazing.

He stopped watering it, then pruned the shit out of it, (badly) and is essentially letting it die.

I’ve included pictures of what he left me with. The vine used to extend all the way to the fence post you can see at the left.

Oh and don’t forget, he just cut the vine near the main plant. He left all of the vine threaded through the fence to wither and die making it much more difficult to remove because as it dries out, it’s no longer flexible. The stuff growing up his wall is a bit of Virginia creeper. Why he decided to fuck up my grape vine and leave the creeper is a complete mystery.

I’m tempted to tell him, “If you want to kill a plant, cut it off at the root.”

Now when I go outside I get to look at the side of his house, his shitty gate, and the exhaust ports for his tankless water heater. If you visualize the plant growing up the fence extending all the way to the left you’ll get a sense of the green wall that afforded me some privacy If I was sitting on my lower deck enjoying the sunshine.

As the plant goes to sleep, I’m sure I’ll find more vines he cut through but for the moment I’ve removed all the obviously damaged parts of the plant.

If by some miracle I’m able to stay in the house, come springtime I’m thinking I’ll move the grape to my back fence where it won’t inconvenience the neighbor and I’ll plant something really invasive and fast growing like Virginia creeper along my fence next to his house. He can cut that all he likes, he won’t make a dent in it. I’m thinking I’ll toss some Mexican Sage into the area between the fence and his house and I’m not going to bother cutting down the weeds between his house and the fence. Once the Mexican sage takes hold He’ll have a jungle and a hefty fine every spring from the county for fire abatement.

I think there’s a kind of prickly fence edging I can lay down that snakes aren’t supposed to like crossing. I’ll let him deal with the rattlesnakes that may take up residence on his property.

Thinking about it, he might have heard me talking to my brother. I was using my new AirPods during the conversation while I was cleaning up the mess he left me. I think I recall seeing him wandering around the moonscape his yard is now.

I hope he did hear me talking to my Brother. I hope he heard exactly what I think of him.

Were it not so close to my bedroom, I’d start dumping all of Jesse’s poop on that side of the house too.

I feel like I’ve been too nice. I’ve not said word one about his incessant music, (Oh I’ve thought some bad things, I’ve even played my music loud enough that his was being drowned out,) I’ve not complained about him using a leaf blower on dirt kicking up dust clouds, I’ve not said shit about him running a chain saw in the early morning or in the evening when I sit down to dinner and watch a movie.

I’ve been the ”nice guy” a.k.a. The doormat everyone shits on. The guy that just minds his own business and tries really hard to not make waves.

I’ve got enough on my plate without fighting with the neighbors too. I’ve been too quiet, too forgiving, and in doing so people think they can ignore me or walk all over me. Until they need something… Because, “Hey he’s a nice guy… it’s okay for us to fuck him over.”

Jerry taught me to be nice. What I need to relearn is how to be a raging asshole. That appears to be the only way to survive the liberal fuckers these days.