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permission that politics demanded
Wednesday, May 26 2010
The day was incredibly hot, the kind where one breaks into a drenching sweat if doing anything other than watching television.
We've decided to install a barrier of mature trees along Dug Hill Road to give ourselves some privacy. Since there is almost no soil where the trees are to be planted, we're following the suggestion of a local landscaper and bringing in truckloads of soil and building a 30 inch berm and planting the trees in that. The only caveat is that the land in question doesn't actually belong to us; it belongs to our uphill neighbors. They're good people and remarkably hip for their age (they've lived here over 50 years and date to a time when registered Republicans could be cool). But they place more importance on landscaping than we do, and in the past they've registered mild concern about the inattention we'd payed to this patch of their property. (We've been trying to get it to return to forest on its own, but that process is proceeding too slowly.) After Gretchen had called out a landscaper and started making arrangements, I'd reminded her that we should probably talk to our neighbors first. So Gretchen shot them a quick email hoping that would be that. But no, they wanted to talk about it. So today we had a political errand to run.
Their main concern was about trees growing too tall and blocking their view, though there were also ancillary (if nonsensical) arguments about pollen and trees falling on houses. But all we had to do to defuse the issue and get the permission that politics demanded was to promise not to let the trees get too tall.
Later in the afternoon,Gretchen headed off to the Adirondacks, where she'll be attending the special five day Memorial Day Weekend at Blue Mountain Center, the retreat for artists and writers. She'd won her slot there in a lottery that is available to BMC alumni.
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