One of our neighbors is insisting that our other neighbor must cut down two beautiful pine trees because they drop sap on her car.
These two trees are my friends. Calming, darkly beautiful, needled and bushy. The birds all hide in them. They shield a house that is basically a simple gray box that will be ugly without them.
Why aren’t homeowners required to get a permit or pay a huge fee before they can kill a tree above a certain size?
Those white pines are surely older than any of us.
Some of the biggest trees in neighboring gardens have died of disease or old age lately and only one neighbor (Felicitas!) cared enough to replace elm with sycamore.
Our sky is bare and stretched, the un-beautiful stands revealed. Sagging tarps and chain link and asphalt.
While I’m weeping here let me also tell you how on the other tiny street that feeds into ours, really a one lane alley, 15 new condos have been approved for construction. 15!!!!
There is just not enough space for that much building. The houses are already side by side with only driveways between.
Our street is a lane and a half, and I dread 30 new cars barrelling around that corner every day.
We already have no parking places left on the street. Thank god for our own driveway, though it’s already impossible to back out of it without endangering ourselves.
The homeowners greedily build till there isn’t a blade of grass visible.
Profit, greed and escalation rule our world. I’m sad, obviously, and feeling helpless and angry.
The local officials just handed out these permits indiscriminately. At meetings with neighbors, planners said they wouldn’t consider the overall neighborhood, just each project on its own.