Garden blues

This is the view from the seat at the end of my vege garden. Isn't it great? This isn't a good day, the southerly is rolling in, see those clouds and that rain over there? The sun sets behind those faraway hills. That's my roof at the right edge of the picture. We're facing the wilderness that is my down-hill neighbours garden. They never ever set foot there. Honestly, not in 10 years have they been there. I clamber over sometimes to cut down the gorse and the fennel. If I live here for another 20 years I'll claim it and plant a native forest or something.

We have our backs to my uphill neighbours. A nice young couple with their almost 2 year old moved in about November. Before them, the house was empty for 12 months. Before that it was home to an old lady, who'd lived there for over 50 years. She told me tales about the neighbourhood and the garden...she had great photographs of when our houses were built (in the 1950s). Well, of course, because she was in her 80s, and then it was empty, there was no gardening going on next door for a good 10 years. Over the last 6 weeks, the new owners have been making up for lost time. They've slashed and chopped and utterly changed the landscape.

It used to be that I couldn't see their house. Now I can see all of it. There is a public path that goes up past their house, and last week I realised that you can now see my garden and my house, right into the lounge, from the public path. I've begged them to leave alone two of the pohutakawa trees that march up the boundry between us. They've cut down kitty's favourite limb of another pohutakawa. He keeps going over there and sniffing around it where it lies on the ground! I've told them quite firmly but politely that I think they should leave one tree alone (although they've trimmed it heavily) because I think it's holding up their property above mine. They were sad when I pointed out they'd chopped down a pretty good apple tree and a beautiful rose. I managed to save the pear tree though!

Actually, writing this is cheering me up a bit. I'm devastated about losing all that privacy. I loathe how they can now walk up and down their path and look into my lounge. I have been playing more music, loud, because I can hear all their conversations at their front door with no trees in between us any more. I went into the garden to take the pictures before and scurried inside again becos I didn't want to get into a conversation with them.

The worst thing is, that just as I was getting to be able to plan new planting, and maybe buy a beautiful garden seat, and start living out there, rather than just working my butt off out there, it's become - well, not what I expected I guess.

On the upside, they're good people, I like them, and I've let them know, gently and without confrontation, a bit about how I'm feeling. You'd have to stand still, on their path, or the public path, to have a really good look at my garden or house, and not many people are going to do that. The light's changed at my place, there's probably more sun, so that's probably a good thing on the whole (but not good for one quilt that used to hang in a more shaded spot).

And the moral of the story is, be careful what you wish for. Because I used to wish I wasn't surrounded by gardens that no-one cared about. Ha!

But hey, look at that view. Come have a g&t up there with me sometime.