So when we moved into the house there was this tree
in the backyard. It was a huge tree, a beautiful example of an Elm. It’s
massive trunk took up a large portion of my backyard, reducing the need for
mowing and providing shade for both my and my Gospel Sucking neighbors.
As trees are wont to do, it dropped it’s share of
leaves, seeds, twigs, branches and squirrels. Because it was so huge, it
dropped all of this crap all over both yards. I occasionally raked the leaves
and allowed the dogs to chew on the squirrel carcasses, but otherwise generally
didn’t pay too much attention. Until one day when I noticed that there seemed
to be a pattern of sticks upon my lawn.
Okay, not like some kind of crop circle or anything.
It was more like the fact that the Elm was dropping sticks in a particular way:
There seemed to be more sticks right next to the fence--a lot more. Of course,
on the other side of the fence was the Gospel Suckers’ picture perfect lawn. I
then realized that when sticks were falling on their lawn, they were chucking
them over the fence. Hopefully, they at least hit a dog.
Now, this wouldn’t be without precedent. When we
moved in there were two landscape waste bags that I assumed had been left by
the previous occupants. The gospel Suckers quickly introduced themselves, and
explained that the bags were grass clippings from when they mowed my lawn
before I moved in the house. Two full landscape bags was a lot of grass
clippings, so I looked deeper in the bag, and found that it was filled mostly
with brush from their meticulously maintained shrubbery along with a bunch of
pulled weeds and three beer cans.
So I leaned over the fence to talk to her while she
was busy hunting down Satan’s flowers, otherwise known as dandelions.
“Hi Annie.”
“Well, Hi Chris.” She immediately came over. She
knows I’m a heathen and though I think she is as personally repulsed by me as I
am by her, she pretends.
“Nice day for gardening.” I decided to start light.
“Yes, it is. Just wanted to get out here before the
weekend. Jenna and her husband are coming over.” She was wearing white canvas
gloves with little harps on them. "Are you starting a garden over
there?"
"Yeah. I've churned up a patch over there, and
now I'm going allow for some contemporary native flora to randomly appear."
"What kind of flowers are you planting?"
"Contemporary native flora. You know stuff like
violets."
"Oh, I'm sure that'll be real pretty. But
gardens are a lot of work."
"Oh, it's okay. It's self maintaining." I
decided to test the waters. “That tree seems to be dropping a lot of sticks.”
“Yes, I’m always picking up after it.” Her gaze
wafted over the mounds of sticks and dog fecal matter that dotted my lawn.
"It sheds a lot."
“It's kind of funny how they all seem to fall along
the fence.” Her eyes followed my gaze. The sticks were quite frequent along the
fence, and thinned out considerably before reaching the trunk.
“You don’t think I’ve been throwing them over the
fence do you?” Well, actually, yeah I did. But I was a little too polite to
call her a liar to her face. After all, I had never seen her throw any sticks
across the fence. And it was quite possible that one of the hoard of
homeschooled grandkids she calls Prayer Warriors has been doing it. But I never
see any landscape waste bags in front of their pristine house.
“Well, no. But it is kind of odd how they’re all
along the fence.” I wondered how she was going to get out of this one.
“Hey, I haven’t seen your cat lately.” Ooh, a change
of subject, and a sore one to boot. Our yard seems to be a breeding ground for
snakes; the Gospel Sucking wife hates them. It was a perfect situation.
Unfortunately, when the cat showed up, it liked eating snakes, which was
somewhat annoying but quite amusing to watch after giving him catnip. My only
consolation was the fact that she was also violently allergic to cats.
The following year the Municipality’s Department of Forestry was created specifically to condemn the tree because of disease. Fortunately, they didn’t care about sod, and so when they cut the mighty elm down, the hydraulic truck ripped up the Gospel Suckers' yard pretty bad. But it was only small consolation for signing a death warrant for a tree.
