Garden

[jeshyr]

These are two photos of the view outside my bedroom window. The older photo shows light green box elder in the background, but most of the foreground is the dark green leaf of … I don’t even know what the tree was. In the newer photo, there’s just the light green and a completely bare stump. You can’t tell from the pics, but the dark green was right up against the window and the light green is 4-6 feet away.

The workmen who cut down the tree immediately outside my bedroom window without even bothering to tell me that it was going to be done were utterly shocked when I burst into tears. How on earth can anybody imagine that I would not care or want to know about what happens within a foot of my own bedroom window?

I know full well it’s body corporate land and I have no control and (virtually) no ability to make them stop, even if I had known in advance, but the fact that they were shocked that I might *want* to have some knowledge or control really baffles me …

Comments

[acelightning]

to most people it's "just a tree", and cutting it down involves no more emotional involvement than pulling up a weed. and from the pictures, it seems very likely that the tree was too close to the building, and they wanted to avoid damage. people often think that it's somehow "natural" to have a tree branch hanging over their house roof, but it's actually very destructive. moisture condenses out of the air preferentially under the roof shingles that lie beneath the branch's shadow, and eventually leads to rot. a big branch can be blown by a strong wind so that it breaks, and smashes through the roof (or wall). and small animals in the trees can just walk out the branch and drop lightly onto the roof, and then find a way to get inside the attic, or even the walls (i've got squirrels trying to chew their way through the ceiling and into the inside of the house; one of the ways they get in is from a huge tree that overhangs the house, at a precarious angle since Superstorm Sandy).

but they should have given you some notice, not only for practical reasons, but to give you time to say goodbye.

[jeshyr]

Wow yeah OK I completely failed at describing the issue if even you didn't get it ... Sorry about that - my bad. I was so upset yesterday I wasn't making much sense!!

My issue - primarily - is that they made a large change to the my bedroom's view, the light in the room, the amount of privacy in the room, etc., and that they did it without asking or even notifying me. I would have been similarly upset if they'd done it by putting up an extra wall or removing my window, or some other non-plant-related way. This is my house, this is where I live, I realise that I have no ownership or power here but I don't like that state of affairs. I don't want people to be able to make significant changes to things at my home environment without even bothering to tell me about them.

I am aware of the issues with trees and structures but 95% of what you wrote doesn't apply here:
- We don't use shingles in Australia, they're one of those things I know from stories but have never seen. The roof here is tin.
- My building is 2 stories high and none of this plant was above about 7 feet tall.
- There are no eaves involved because the building has a flat roof there's no space "under the eaves" at all, even if there was it would have been 10+ feet above the plant's height.
- They didn't take out the root or kill the plant anyway - you can see there's like 1.5 branches left in the second photo and the root part is fine.

The people who did this aren't gardeners and had no instructions from the body corporate to cut down anything. They're replacing the gutters and to do it safely they had to remove about 3 of the vertical suckers (branch-style things) from this plant - they were in the way. After they'd done that they noticed one of the remaining suckers was pushing against the handrail on my ramp and decided off their own bat to remove that piece even though it wasn't deforming or hurting the handrail in any way. After that they went "ah who cares about plants anyway, we'll remove some more" basically ...

BTW the reason this plant has such a weird form anyway is that it's a huge bunch of suckers regrown from a previously cut-off stump that's about a foot tall, it's been growing like that for about 8 years. So cutting off some of the suckers would DEFINITELY not going to be an effective way to stop it growing even if that had been their goal ... but like I said, they didn't really have any goal and have no instructions to do that anyway.

So yeah ... actually I am pretty fond of my plants as you know but that's not really the main thing I don't think. I just felt invaded and unhappily reminded that I have no bloody control over most of the stuff in my life and that sucks :/

Love you tons, honey. You do know me very well :)

[acelightning]

could you put up curtains, or an awning (if it won't be in the way of what's left of the tree), or something similar, at that window to provide the shade and/or privacy you've lost? there's always some way to get at least partial control of your environment, despite the management :-)

oh! i just had an idea! *checks IKEA... checks IKEA Australia...* one or two of these by the window, inside - you can mount them so they swivel to adjust the angle.

(i don't think i have to tell you that IKEA "children's" products are also quite useful to grownups. a few months ago, i realized that my little two-drawer nightstand - from IKEA, some 20 years ago - was overstuffed and starting to fall apart. when i looked for a replacement, i found a unit that was about twice the size, with bigger drawers. it's intended as a small chest of drawers for a child's clothes... but it's plain white, and it just looks like a bigger nightstand, which is exactly what i wanted!)

[jeshyr]

I have curtains, but then i can't see out.
I have to close them now, of course, because it's too bright and sunny and exposed now with no privacy so I can't leave them open anymore.
But with the curtains I'm enclosed.
Instead of dappled shade and leaves to look at, it's just curtains.

I hate it.

[acelightning]

that's why i thought of the giant leaves. (they're fairly translucent.) i was imagining that you could position them near the top of the window. but maybe they're not big enough for what you need.

the last time i was in a fabric store, a couple of weeks ago, i saw some unusual fabric. it was made rather like "camouflage net", but on a smaller scale. the base fabric was a sort of semi-opaque netting, printed in shades of green and brown in a fairly normal "camo" pattern. but irregular snippets of the same fabric were stitched all over it, attached only at one end, so they'd flutter like real leaves. this was being sold as apparel fabric, which i thought was rather weird. but if you had curtains made out of something like that, they'd provide privacy without blocking the view completely, and let a little bit of dappled light through.

that stained-glass film is awfully pretty, too, and provides more privacy.

[jeshyr]

I'm thinking of getting a strip of this for the top 2 feet or so of the window: http://www.wallpaperforwindows.com/pc/Atlantis-Stained-Glass-Window-Film-p271.htm

[acelightning]

oh, that is pretty! i couldn't find the curved corner bits on the website, but it's not a terribly well-designed website in the first place. and i know how artistic you are - you'll make something totally gorgeous out of that window :-)