Our neighbors were going to get slapped with a pretty hefty fine from the city if they didn’t trim the two overgrown trees in their front yard. When I say overgrown, I mean 10 or more years of growth totally engulfing their house; just a completely solid mass of tree. I kind of loved it since it functioned like a privacy shrub, totally obscuring their house from view.

Being a nice guy The Boy offered to trim the tree and haul it all away for our older / kooky / hot rodding / cat hoarding neighbor for a $100. It is so much tree. SO MUCH. This makes day three of the big bush trim and The Boy uncovered some lovely graffiti poetry. (BTW, I hear Steven Cruz is dreamy).

I’m psyched that this lovelorn teenage tagger decided to sign her name for all the world to know of her “like”. I would have been dying to know whose feelings these were if she hadn’t, but luckily I know who to fight with for Steve’s affections.

Here is a bit of context. I’m so glad we get to see this from our front yard from now on. Magical.

Maybe we should have just let Mr. Neighbor get slapped with the fine. It’s not like he is volunteering to fix this next hot neglected mess. I know – because we asked. He said he didn’t have the cash, but hey look at my awesome yellow $500 paint job on my hot rod. Grind Grind Grind. Cats Cats Cats.

In the meantime we are preparing the side yard for the pool and landscaping, but first thing first, we need to fix the shared fence. Damn you cat man.

This is how we fix it every few days. A board falls down, we tack it up. Perfect. Well except for the steel pole holding the fence up from collapsing.

Looks like about five of the support posts have rotted out and need replacing. Shouldn’t cost very much and we can salvage most of the wood, but it appears that we have to shoulder the cost and do all the labor.

One day you will be free Iggy, free to enjoy a landscaped side yard. Eventually. Hopefully free of cats.

Did I tell you the story about this neighbors cat that jumped out of our closet in the middle of the night? No? Well that’s about it. Big cat. Middle of the night. TERROR ensues.