Winter's End Game

"It is blocking the front door, we are stuck inside." said the reincarnated Robert Frost of a Tenant at one of my rentals. He sent me a photograph after taking an effortless walk outside and standing in the front lawn. Mind you there was a statewide Nor'easter advisory and every sane soul had been advised to stay indoors because a mad snowstorm was blowing! Besides! There was always the back door for mid-snowstorm casual strolls! But you can't reason with an argumentative Tenant who uses the word 'emergency' too much. So I rang every tree removal person I know.

Snowstorm Stella - the unexpected Nor'easter - was as highly anticipated as the grande finale of The Vampire Diaries that announced the death of one of the Salvadtore vampire brothers. I ignored Stella and crossed my fingers for the safety of Damon Salvatore. He lived --- but Stella was offended and threw a fit. Trees came crashing down around one of my rentals. Half a tree fell on the front roof, and a branch of pine came down in the same house's backyard and clung to a power line. And while every Marylander was safely inside the house, my Tenant was roaming around taking photographs of fallen trees and requesting emergency tree removal when every service on earth was suspended for the day!

 

Nobody responded because the world was in apocalypse mode and the Tenant just had to sit inside instead of ball dancing in the back and front yards. My mood was upset already because I knew that tree removal = big time expense. Plus, this particular rental has a Whomping Willow family living in the backyard. A couple years back I had 3 gigantic pine trees removed from the lot. And still, one of the remaining decided to curtsy during the blizzard! 

The next day, the front tree was chopped up and hauled away and cost me a fortune! I hate you Stella. It was my lawn and landscaping guy doing the honors which kept the expense under control. Had it been a full on tree removal service with fancy shmancy bob cats and wood chippers it would have eaten up a big chunk of money. He hauled away branches in a truck and made a couple trips to the dumpster. The beauty of a dumping facility is that they CHARGE YOU for dumping trips! Plus, he had to pay the extra guy he'd gotten together with to tackle the baby cousin of Whomping Willow.

I had tried being smart. I'd called up the City to ask if the guy could bundle all this junk up and pile it there for yard waste pickup on trash days. They said chop up everything in 4 feet lengths and make bundles not exceeding 20 lbs and store in paper bags and only bring them out to the curb on trash day which was a week from then. So, instead of inflicting torture on my landscaping guy I just asked him to haul it away!

 

So Winter's end game was pretty nasty for me. The only person who derived happiness out of this was Robert Frost!