I can’t say whether or not I will become a finalist in this contest. However, should I be so fortunate, I will be appealing to each of you and, asking you to appeal to anyone you think might be willing to join in the process; to evaluate my submissions in comparison to the others and then offer your honest feedback. As I understand it, I won’t have access to individual feedback so honesty is always encouraged. Stay tuned for further updates.
Today is an absolutely brilliant autumn day. An absolutely beautiful sky streaked by contrails and high Cirrus clouds.
The Washington County Power Board is having trees along Cassi Road trimmed back in hopes of limiting or preventing power interruptions this winter and next year. Gloria and I have spent a bit of time talking with the trimming crew yesterday and today. It’s fascinating to watch them work. The risk of injury and death working around power lines is high. Their tools and equipment can injure them badly in a moment’s carelessness. They have been telling us about some of the people who complicate their jobs.
Many people will not control or confine their dogs when the trimmers arrive. Others will threaten them if they set foot on the property. Some don’t want to allow their trees to be trimmed.
They are exposed to spiders, told us tales of hand-sized aggressive spiders that actually follow them down trees. They encounter bees, hornets, & wasps. They run into snakes, venomous and non-venomous. They encounter toxic plants. They earn their money.
They also see a lot while working. They told us that they could probably point out every house where something illegal was taking place. They figure this out by matching traffic to the calendar. I have no desire to know anymore about their observations. I have little doubt that they are correct in their assumptions. They told us about seeing dogs chained and left with no food or water. They recognized that our neighbor’s dogs were under-fed. All-in-all they had a fair amount of knowledge to impart that I had not planned on acquiring.
The most unusual and problematic thing they told us concerns our neighbor across the road. He is our closest neighbor in proximity but our least trusted or desirable neighbor. When we first moved in and walked over to meet him, he told us that he grew up in the house he lives in. We rapidly discovered that this was not true – other neighbors who have lived here all their lives told us that he did not grow up here and that his house is not handed down from his grandmother as he told us.
His dogs run loose, were not properly vaccinated until we complained about them to animal control. His dogs, over the years, have carried off many items such as door mats and driveway lights, easily identified as ours but not returned until I went over and demanded them back. He’s been a bad neighbor in many ways. When requested to dial back volume at a party he hosted, the request was delivered at 0130, he had the band up the volume. His response to me, that I had been invited, was neither correct nor acceptable. He and his son have repeatedly dropped all manner of trash into the creek; have tried to dispose of brush cut on his property by throwing it onto ours. In short, he is not a good neighbor and shows no likelihood of becoming one.
The tree trimmers told us today that he had stopped them trimming and cutting on the downstream section of our property. He apparently told them our property is his. I had a copy of the survey readily available and showed it to the trimmers and then walked them down to the lower corner of our property. I asked them to go ahead as they had planned, to trim and cut as they needed to. We also gave them permission to dump chipped wood into a ditch that parallels the road on our side. That may actually kill some of the knotweed we want to get rid of. If our neighbor, Greg, interferes again, the next step will be to let the county sheriff’s deputy deal with Greg. With anyone else, I’d try to negotiate some calm and reasonable path. There’s no point in wasting breath on Greg. They’ll be back to trim again on Monday. We’ll see what happens. My best guess is that Greg’s stupidity and boorishness will be on full display.
We’re now into the season of baseball playoffs, the World Series, and myriad football games; each one bound to run overtime and delay anything in the television broadcast schedule that might actually be intellectually interesting. With numerous sports channels, I fail to understand why the broadcast networks feel compelled to air professional athletic competitions at college or adult level. One thing’s for certain, I’d be happy to skew the Neilson ratings now.
The usual creek shot water down still more.
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