Heather, by Elizabeth Gomm (CC BY-NC)

I’ve been obsessed with heather lately–but I suspect a more rugged landscape than former farmland suburbia is required to get the proper effect.

I am, however, very glad that the plants I ordered a couple weeks ago have not yet shipped. The storm we had earlier this week on the East Coast ended up being mostly ice with a tiny amount of snow and it would have likely been disastrous for freshly transplanted plants. It also caused the evergreen stuff (cypress? arbor vitae? who knows!) along our back property line to bend from the weight, three of them right into our neighbor’s yard and on top of her still-dormant ornamental grasses. The others draped themselves over our shed but seem to be recovering their composure (their days are still numbered, though).

Instead of waiting until a professional tree guy could come out to look or for the ice to melt, she recruited some of her male relatives to hack them to bits–as she was completely entitled to do, since they were on her yard–and then stack the branches in the common area behind our house. Which I am not okay with: county code says that items in your yard are your responsibility to dispose of and the community association prohibits dumping in the common area. So I may have let the association president know about the situation was (I also didn’t want her thinking that we had done it) and that we are planning to have the branches removed but since most tree guys are pretty busy right now clearing people’s driveways and roofs of trees that it may take some time.

Our neighbor seems pretty happy about how much sun the back part of her yard’s going to get now. Well, that it’s going to get until we can install a privacy fence next year. And possibly plant a tree in that corner of the yard.