#Winning/Not Winning
Well, have you missed the Disgruntled Neighbor? Have you hoped for an update? Maybe a nagging feeling in your gut told you that the silence couldn’t last forever. Maybe you too, know someone that feeds, lives, breaths on conflict. Well, we made it folks. We made it to the day I get to update you on Tuesdays in the Neighborhood on the Corner of Merman and Happy St…
If you aren’t aware, and you may be living in the North East somewhere without Internet, papers or cable news access, California is currently in a red alert status drought. We, the home consumers have been asked to be responsible and conservative with water usage. The biggest way to conserve for many is to get rid of our lawns and plant drought resistant, indigenous plants. In fact, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has even incentivized residents by offering money to remove our lawns and replace them with water-wise plants. Here’s a link for more information: http://bit.ly/1wcIKcs. Listen, it’s a very boring and grown-up thing to discuss, lawn care. However, if you pepper it with a bit of insanity, you could very well become an impassioned landscaper, and here is where our latest story begins…
If you haven’t read my previous posts about the Disgruntled Neighbors (who will now be addressed as Disgruntled Couple) - and rest assured, I will send out a Cast of Character’s list soon, as our adventures are growing together - please do so now before continuing, as I wouldn’t want you to miss the exciting build on these two priceless assholes. Blog titles for their first 2 episodes are:
When You Can’t Win and
When You Can’t Win Part II
When I left you last, our neighbors across the street (Nice Guy and Nice Girl) had made a neighborly gesture to their backyard neighbors, Disgruntled Couple. The Disgruntled Couple sent an unsolicited and abrupt email to Nice Guy & Nice Girl regarding a post they made on the social media app NextDoor. Nice Guy & Nice Girl, were looking to get a local referral for an arborist to come and diagnose a few sickly trees in their backyard. The Disgruntled Couple sent a thinly veiled, confrontational email requesting Nice Guy & Nice Girl leave the trees alone. In an effort to ease Disgruntled Couples concerns, Nice Guy & Nice Girl assured them they were not seeking to merely chop down healthy trees and would not do anything permanent without discussing with them first. If you read the blog entry titled When You Can’t Win Part II you can read the emails in their entirety, which I suggest so you can have a strong base knowledge of their personalities before commenting on the following. Nice Guy & Nice Girl finally finished their assessments with not one, but three separate tree professionals and sent the following update to Disgruntled Couple:
Hi Disgruntled Couple.
We had three different people come out this month to view the Eucalyptus trees between our properties. 1. Saul’s Tree Service, 2. Darren from “Hipster Lumberjack” and 3. arborist, Dick Aroyo of treeloveLA. $200 was spent on consulting fees between #2 and 3 btw.
Here are their conclusions (sorry, it’s a long read):
1. Saul: “Cut ‘em down, they suck. I’ll take the ones on your side down for $1200.”
2. Darren from Urban Lumberjack: “I’m no arborist, I’m the structural guy and these guys have been poorly cut for a very long time. The main trunks were removed years ago and the ones you have now are the side growth limbs. Some are better than others, but because they are not from the main trunk most will continue to grow at various angles. The ones hanging over your neighbor’s yard (Disgruntled Neighbor) will likely come down, I don’t know when, but who’s going to be in their backyard when they fall anyway. I’m sure they’ll be fine. Also, you can’t just trim these trees because they are touching power lines. You either have to hire expensive city-certified tree trimmers, or put in a request to the city every time they get close to the lines - which is what has clearly been happening since the trees have crazy spike damage. The lerp isn’t causing the trees to be unstable, but they are an infection that can only be treated with injections, but again I’m no arborist. Basically you don’t have the original Eucalyptus trees, you have essentially a Eucalyptus shrub. If it were me, I’d just have the city trim the tops and I’d carefully use an aluminum pole saw to cut most of it back, and clear out all the stuff below. It’s not going to help with the lerp but it might make them look more like trees than bushes. I wouldn’t worry about them falling on your deck, they’re definitely headed down there (he then pointed to your – Disgruntled Neighbor - back dirt area). I wouldn’t hire me to do the job cause I’m too expensive for what you need done. Just get a tree guy who knows what’s he’s doing and clean and trim."
3. Dick of treeloveLA: “I like to compare trees on a property that my clients just bought with buying a lottery ticket because when you buy a house no one really tells you the true condition of the trees, because they often don’t know. And I’m sorry to tell you, but you have a losing ticket with these trees. They haven’t been cut properly for decades and they’re never going to look and grow like they should.” (I asked what he would do if it were his property) “That’s not a fair question since I can treat and care for it myself at a much lower cost than you can, and I personally prefer a view of trees over views of the city, but everyone’s different. But what you can do is trim much of it back away from the deck, let the city cut the tops, but clear out the ground below. And then treat for the lerp with trunk injections and see how it goes. There are no other effective treatments for this type of bug. You have to inject all the trunks or the lerp will just jump to the untreated trees and wait till the other treatments wear off and go on back. If you treat all the trees, then they may just evacuate the area entirely to find the nearest set of untreated trees. Now the injections are no guarantee that they won’t come back next year, but I have seen them disappear after one treatment at best and at 4-5 treatments at worst. Treatment would be $1,250 with my discount since you don’t technically own the property.”
So, as you can see there are two options but each at a cost both financially and laborious to us.
Option 1: I could have the trees on our half of the alleyway cut down (leaving the stumps and the 4 trunks that are growing over your yard), then plant new shrubs, trees, or whatever works best for privacy on our half of the alleyway. It’s estimated at $1,200 to cut those trunks down and I’m not sure what the cost would be to plant new stuff, maybe another $1,000 I’m guessing. So, $2,200+ to us.
Option 2: We keep them all trimmed and maintain a clear ground (efforts from the city, us, and/or contractors). I have bids from day laborers to clear the ground and do some trimming in the $300-$500 range. Add the lerp treatment (which may need to be repeated yearly) for another $1,250 and we’re looking at $1,600 or so for this year, split between us at $800 each. I wish I could just treat my half of the trees for lerp, but Nick made it clear that doesn’t work.
What do you think?
We're ok keeping the trees if there’s some shared responsibility and efforts. If you don’t have the time or money to maintain the trees (totally understandable), then I can also go with option 1. Just let me know what you guys would like to do at this point.
Thanks.
Nice Guy & Nice Girl
In absolute middle ground fairness, I would say, ugh, I don’t want to continue to spend money, let’s go over there, make a date with them and discuss in person. Maybe there’s a better solution – maybe the four of us could remove the trees and plant some mutually agreed upon saplings, shrubs, I don’t know, but we’re neighbors and share the responsibility of the alleyway grooming, so we need to figure it out together. That would be my reaction to new people, change… neighbors. However, I am not, all people and neither are you, my friends. So, send email, was the response from Disgruntled Neighbors. They sent another, thinly veiled, confrontational email… and do note the impossibly irritating way they continue to misspell Nice Girl… Almost on purpose…
Hi Nice Guy and Nice Gurl-
Glad to hear that the lerp are both treatable and not a threat to the structural integrity of the trees. I'm not sure why we would even consider option 1, cutting them down, since the only argument I've heard for removal was the nuisance the lerp create for your deck; which we now know is manageable?
We have no problems with responsible cleaning and trimming of the trees.
As for the cost you've outlined in Option 2, the lerp on the trees don't negatively effect us or our property, so if you want to get rid of them, go ahead. You have our permission to treat the trees on our side of the alley, if that will help get rid of the entire lerp population back there.
The fire department inspects the alley every year, and we have never been cited. We will continue to maintain the alley as required by law, as we have done since we bought our house in 2007.
We'd love to hear your ideas about re-establishing the privacy between our two properties.
I've attached a couple pics of the privacy we had before you guys moved in, and what we have now.
Pre Deck/Fence Removal:
Eucalyptus Trees:
Best,
Disgruntled Neighbors
Um, so am I to understand from the photos that, pre-deck/fence removal there was a deteriorating wood fence with an infestation of lerp and rotting wood that was removed. I would remove that disturbing and unhealthy structure as well, no offense – gross. Maybe I would have put a fence back up because I have dogs, but maybe I wouldn’t, because I also love decks. And in its absence is a camouflaged wood supporting beam to a deck. From the photo it is clear that you have no visibility of the deck, deck furniture, or people on the deck – because it was strategically built and furnished for privacy, but you do have a view of the open sky. What’s with all the deck animosity? I don’t get it. Okay, so I see the trees in both photos, but not really in the “before” photo, which is odd because the whole issue is not about the deck, but strictly about the trees, correct? Oh boy, is this deck envy? Are we getting on because you have deck envy or is it about sick trees? Because if it is really about sick trees, wouldn’t you have started your email addressing saving the sick trees versus a dig about the neighbors deck? Again, there is no argument regarding the need for everyone's individual privacy and furthermore, the tree removal will/would coincide with planting of new life. More over, new healthy life that will enrich and create a healthy environment. What is the argument again? I’m confused. Are you confused? Hm.
I think next weeks post of follow-up emails will clear up the confusion. They are some real doozeys so stay tuned. Until then, think about it and get back to me with your thoughts…
