Wednesday, July 13, 2011

In Today's Mail

This morning, just after 6am, the doorbell rang, waking me up and inducing a sudden cramp in my calf as I bounced around putting on a housecoat to rush downstairs. When I got there, though, nobody was at the door.

Cut to later this afternoon, when I came home and found mail and something else in the box: an envelope with no stamp on it, addressed to (and from here on any spelling errors you find are lifted directly from the envelope and letter therein):

"A concered neigbour"

The letter inside says:

"Dear Neigbour,
Would you mind triming the tree at the corner of the alley, we use the alley every day & it is hard to see coming out of the alley, if there is a car coming down the street, also it is scatching our cars as it is so far out.
A concered neigbour
Thank you."

Obviously, I have no proof that this envelope was a result of the ring-a-door ginger game this morning at 6. But I think it's a reasonable assumption.

Part of me wants to put a sign up in the alley excoriating this person for their gutless behaviour; we would have no problem accepting someone ringing the bell and asking to talk to us (although, to be honest, we would have some problems with a person doing this when we're asleep. That's pretty bloody rude). We do have a problem with anonymous, passive-aggressive notes.

We also agree that the tree is in an awkward place, and it grows like a weed, although unless you're driving a Hummer there is no reason you can't slide around it, and I question how fast they're coming out of the alley when the distance between the tree and the road is about 10 feet.

The tree, though, is an elm, and there is a city bylaw about cutting down or trimming elms after the end of April and before the beginning of September. This is to prevent the spread of Dutch elm disease, and we are trying to get clarification on the whole "cutting down" part, since we want to get rid of it.

So, we will take care of this, but at our own speed, and my wife will be my smarter half and make sure I don't do or say anything too stupid, although she's obviously not a miracle worker, as many of you can attest. But I may go out and tie some coloured safety ribbon around a branch or two in the meantime, just for fun.

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