Other people’s trees

One of the rare things that are more annoying than other people’s children is other people’s trees with branches hanging over your garden. I have one such tree – or rather, my neighbour has it, I only have a few branches that give me lots of work year round. In autumn it is – you’ve guessed it – dead leaves. Buckets and buckets of them to be swept every day or, time permitting, twice a day, packed into plastic bags and disposed of. In spring time it is some fluff – tiny yellowish droplets – that fall all over the place, hogging the plants, burrowing among the stones, covering the paved patio. Again to be swept and scooped into buckets and binned. Then come tiny green seeds that rain down and pop most unpleasantly as I walk over the paved area. It’s even worse when they fall onto the soil, for from each and every one of those seeds sprout at least one – and I suspect even more than one – seedlings, to be plucked out and binned.

I even have the photographic evidence of the plucked out seedlings:

 

And here are the seeds:

With all that evidence, you would think I’d be able to sue someone. But no one cares, except my sore back that complains every time I bend.

In all honesty, I must say that things used to be even worse. There used to big conifers growing in the neighbouring garden, right next to the wall separating it from my garden.

I like conifers as much as the next person. In fact, I simply love them when I am on the mountain skiing. But as anyone who has had conifers – at least this particular kind of various stuff shedding conifers – knows, they are a nuisance. If you are not collecting needles that fell of them, you are collecting most unseemly little yellow things that resemble worms. Plus, they seldom allowed sunrays into my garden.

After petitions from several gardeners next to my townhouse, who shared my woes with the conifers (they formed a long row), the gardeners from our complex were allowed to go into the next door property and cut them down.

I relish the sun and the absence of needles and wormy things; still, I must confess I miss the conifers. Only this painting I made when they were still blocking the sun and shedding their stuff remains to remind me of them:
photo 

I know, sooner or later the obnoxious tree will be cut down too, probably when the next door property is sold for development. I can’t wait, even though it means I’ll be left without the shade and will have to invest into one of those monstrous umbrellas.

Here is the picture of the tree that sheds all those seeds: