Letters to the Editor
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None of your business. None.
This is between your elderly neighbor and the Oleander Queen of the Block. It has NOTHING to do with you and is NONE of your business. Your husband is right - let it go.
For all you know, your elderly neighbor likes the oleanders and thinks the Oleander Queen was doing her a favor by sprucing up the place.
Believe me, I've seen neighborhood busybodies do a lot worse than plant a hedge in someone else's yard. At least she didn't sic the city's goonsquad on your poor elderly neighbor and try to have the government force the woman to fix up her property.
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why didn't...
They just have their gardener - wow they must have some money to be able to hire someone to do their outside work - just clean up the yard? If the old lady didn't say anything while the oleanders were going up, maybe she wouldn't have said anything to someone cleaning up the yard?
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yesterday's post
A woman was upset because found she had fallen out of love with her husband. It struck a lot of people the wrong way, and most of the replies were pretty hateful.
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LW is a version of the interfering neighbour
The LW doesn't like the state of the place next door. Serious disrepair is serious disrepair. We know she doesn't like it because she keeps offering to do something about it. The neighbour knows that she is inflicting an increasingly ugly sight on her neighbours because she apologises. But insists on keeping on inflicting the sight on others. That's deliberately rude to her neighbourhood. There's another neighbour who, just like the LW, doesn't like the state of the place across the road - and being across the road she looks at it every day. So unlike the LW, she doesn't just offer, she actually does something about it at her own expense because she knows the owner isn't going to. Plus she maintains the oleanders at her own expense. Well, that's also rather rude, but very quirky. And this is a quirky neighbourhood, right? So explain again why the LW is bent out of shape about the effective rude neighbour and not the neglectful rude neighbour? I'd go with the quirky one....
PS Shame about yesterday's column, but it was outstandingly the only one where Cary hadn't shown some empathy and thus funny, but maybe not one to have on record. He's batted back some tough advice in other letters, but always with some form of acknowledgement. Maybe he was venting and HE didn't mean the response to be published?!!
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Give a Gold Star to AmyAmyAmy
Yes I believe in general that the LW has to let it go. I even think that it's possible that the old lady quite likes the Oleander.
However, I think AmyAmyAmy's idea to ask for some of the plants herself is brilliant. The Crank Across the Street (CAS) will be furious, but have no recourse, and just by asking if the old lady wouldn't mind giving up a few of the Oleanders, LW can know whether she likes them or not. (And if she does LW can feel relieved.)
But really, that's a revenge from *you* to the CAS. I don't blame you, bt it is butting in. She seems to deserve it though. Sounds like the old lady has been there a long time. Did CAS not see the eye-sore when she moved in? Did she assume the lady would clean it up for her? Did it allow hurt the property value when SHE bought her house?
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Let it go?
It seems we're always being urged to let "it" go when some kind of offense occurs, as if standing up to an offense is somehow worse than the offense itself. People who are stupid, arrogant, intolerant, or selfish enough to think it's ok to go plant bushes on someone else's yard (or any of the other ignorant things people will do to their neighbours) need to be told that just because they want something a certain way doesn't mean they have a *right* to it, nor does it mean they have the right to go onto someone else's property to make changes as they see fit!
If someone had gone to a neighbourhood house that had weathered paint on it and decided to repaint it in whatever today's fashionable colour is, would that be "ok"? Would that be something to just "let go?" What if someone decided your mailbox was ugly and you came home one day and found a new mailbox in YOUR yard? At my house, half of our driveway is concrete and half is gravel - that's how it was when we got it. If someone decided they didn't like the "split surface" look and decided to have the gravel half redone in concrete, I'd be kinda pissed about it!
Planting a hedge on SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY is NOT right. It's not appropriate behaviour and just "letting it go" only encourages the snob across the street in thinking its her right to rearrange the neighborhood as she sees fit. And when you consider that Oleander is a very poisonous plant, it could wind up being an actual problem for the home owner. Imagine if some neighborhood pet - or, worse, a neighborhood child - were to be attracted by the scent and popped some leaves in his mouth to chew on and became ill from it. The neighbor could actually find herself on the bad end of a negligence lawsuit!
The neighbor had ABSOLUTELY no business doing what she did. At the very least, the LW should contact the police, and let them know what the neighbor has done. The police may not be able to do much if the neighbor herself opts not to make a complaint, but if this lady tries something like this on a less passive neighbor sometime, at least the incident would be on report, which might lead the police to take a subsequent complaint more seriously than they might otherwise.
One last thought - if someone planted a bunch of bushes in the snobby neighbor's yard without her permission, just how likely would she be to "let it go?"