When a good deed goes wrong!

Here’s the background. Our neighbours moved into the property next to ours last year. The house and garden had not been looked after well for quite some time. We had tried our best to keep the hedge and trees between us under some sort of control. Our village is extremely rural, with hedgerows, trees and other flora abound.

Over the winter we agreed between us that we would take down a few of the hedging plants to allow more light into their garden. I knew this would involve a little flower border redesign or our part and was quite looking forward to the project.

This weekend work began. Our neighbours came round to help. We shared food, drinks and child-sitting dirties while the heavy lifting went on. By the end of Saturday we were nearly finished… at least we thought we were. I didn’t want to take out all the hedges as this would mean a sizeable gap to the side of our sun deck, (it’s a corner deck) making it look as if we had built it out of place… off to one side of the corner.

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. Mr D and I started the clear-up operation, figuring we only had a couple of plants left to remove. As we started working at 9am, we figured we’d be done by lunchtime. However, we hadn’t factored in the wife and her parents coming over to ‘help’.

By 5pm Mr D had run out of patience and energy. Wife and parents were not taking the hint to stop removing hedging and to stop removing large chunks of our trees to raise the canopy. In the end, we had to just say stop! When I caught sight of the result I was horrified. Wife and parents, on the other side of the fence were saying how great it looked. All I could think of was how horrible my haven looked.

I’ve lost privacy, sound barriers, and wildlife environments, and worst of all, my beloved deck looks awful with the hedging missing from one side. I rushed upstairs, pretending to head for a shower. All I did was look out from my window and sob my heart out.

We gave an inch, and they took and mile, and the rest!

So what started out as us doing a good deed has cost us our lovely garden. Now we need to build a 5 square metre extension to the existing deck to balance its position in the corner. I need to buy fast-growing climbers to replace the missing hedges and work out how to regain our privacy and sound muffling.

I feel a protection spell coming on, one to ensure no further damage to our garden, and to restore the tranquility we worked so hard to create.

Hell hath no fury like a garden witch whose garden has been pillaged!