The forest is falling down around me and the trees are screaming...

[niankhsekhmet]

One of my neighbors who owns the property adjacent to mine is cutting down alot of old growth oaks that butt up to my property. Not fifty feet from my steel barn, a huge oak, probably 100 -125 years old fell to the earth. The tree was not diseased, but rather is being harvested as lumber, the land around us is being developed into a subdivision of sorts. The last thing I want is more people surrounding us. I feel encroached upon, even though there is little if anything I can do about it. This place, Nekhen iunen Sekhmet (The Shrine of Sekhmet's Sanctuary), a place that was so wonderfully peaceful 12 years ago when we bought it, far and away from the sprawling bits of suburbia that we sought to be away from as much as possible is now literally sitting on our doorstep. Part of me wants to say 'screw it' and try and find someplace else, someplace away from the throngs of people and their obscenely large homes, their pets and their loud, obnoxious and completely disrespectful children that chase away the deer, the eagles, the animals that look at this place as a sort of peaceful place to live unhindered. Great, I have a mere 15 acres, but I swear at this moment I feel like I have maybe 15 feet around me and the world continually trying to push me out. I don't want to leave. This is my home. I have often been asked, what would i do if I ever won the lottery, where would I move. I wouldn't. This is my home, but I would buy up all the property around me in order to insure that the encroachment would not continue.

I am a wierdo. I refuse to be a slave to my lawn in the summertime. I love to have ornamental grasses and let the fire nettles and mullein grow all around me. If anyone said I had to participate in the slave to the lawn crap I would fight it tooth and nail. There is something to be said about looking out your office window to see deer lazily feasting on the windfall apples underneath your apple trees, knowing that nobody with their encroaching sounds are going to scare them off. Part of me wants to create around me and mine the legend of crazy witches living on the hill in a log house, surrounded by wild weeds and with abundant "NO TRESSPASSING" signs. I don't want any more neighbors. I don't want McDonald's and a Super Walmart and all the so-called amenities of society on my doorstep, and yet I am told that Anamosa property values are skyrocketing. Part of the reason of that skyrocketing is the fact that the taxes in Jones County (Anamosa is the County seat) are half of those in Linn County, or Johnson County, where larger cities like Cedar Rapids and Iowa City are. We don't have the restrictive building codes or codes about whether or not you have to mow your damned lawn or whether or not you can keep chickens or let the wild blackberries grow so thick that your errant neihbors slice their nosy asses on them.

Actually, that last picture is rather comforting. Can a neighbor go out of their way to have hostile plants as a border? I wonder. I know I am going to be looking into having abundant blackberries or other thorned plants that will cut up anyone foolhearty enough to try to come on my side of the divide. It's hard to go outside. I hear the trees and they are weeping and confused and angry. I try to explain that as long as I can stay here, as long as I can afford to keep this small slice of nature safe, I will.

The trick is to stay just one step ahead of those legislators, tax collectors and stupid neighbors who think that real estate should always equal "highest and best use" - that being whatever turns the most profit.

Comments

[petranef.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to express my solidarity with your feelings. And yay for big trees, wild grasses, and lots of bushes with thorns! :)

I hate the 'burbs too. I've always imagined your place to be a beautiful and peaceful refuge from all of that. I'm sorry to hear it's under attack.

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

I live in a log cabin we have 15 acres are almost all woods, there are sheer limestone cliffs, a cave or two and a creek runs through the bottom of the "canyon" on our property. My neighbors to date have been eagles and vultures and animals. I can go down my road and the nearest neighbor is maybe three hundred yards around a bend, and they are equally not fond of encroachment. I hate it when people do not value trees. I go out and I leave an offering for a tree before pruning. I leave tobacco when I harvest herbs. I cannot for the life of me understand how people can be so soul-less and cut off from what is right. We share this planet with so many other beings, plant, animal and even other humans. I hate when people act like a bunch of self-righteous assholes with a sense of entitlement!

[sesha.livejournal.com]

If anyone said I had to participate in the slave to the lawn crap I would fight it tooth and nail.

I'm not sure why it is people think that a single species of grass is good, but fallen leaves or pine needles or (god forbid) wildflowers in your yard is a public nuisance.

[ex-jenniepan481.livejournal.com]

I hope that guy gets 'harvested' killing beautiful old growth trees!!Aughh!!! horrid!!!

I love wild grass! more opportunity for birds and fay folk. Unfortunaltely the navy doesnt agree so we have to keep our damn lawns 1"!!!

When we get our own house one day I hope it is a lot like yours..I love hearing about your slice of nature!

[nemtetsemnewty.livejournal.com]

Strange as it seems, I understand your sentiment completely and I share it.

When I lived in Howell, Michigan, I did not appreciate what I was given until after I lost it.

I lived on 20 acres of land....some of it was wooded, some was not. Wild animals were everywhere. The land that was culivated was filled with gardens, both flower and vegetable.

The nearest neighbour was 1/4 mile away. The house was a 100 year old farm house.

Now that I appreciate it, it is gone. In its stead is a new subdivision with houses packed so
close together I am told they remind a person of sardines in a tin.

Yes, I understand your sentiment and I share it for what that is worth to you.

Senebty
Nemtetsemnewty

[victorian--rose.livejournal.com]

That is just insane. :( It's really quite pathetic that people place "keeping up with the Jones'" ahead of nature itself. From the idiot neighbor complaining that we need to cut down the tree next to our house because it "gets leaves in his yard" to the bag down the street that had a fit because our backyard was "full of weeds" (apparently mint and lemongrass are "weeds"), I'm just dumbfounded by these people.

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

What is even worse, is that these trees, the majority of them were OAKS! These trees were ancient. Dua Netjer I did not plant my goldenseal rootlets where I thought I was going to, because they would have been destroyed. There would have been too much light now. :-/

[victorian--rose.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* It really makes me wonder if these people every pull their heads out of their rectal orifices long enough to ever breath. That is just beyond words...amazing...

[nemtetsemnewty.livejournal.com]

has the property actually been sold or not? If not, is it being turned into commercial property
or residential property?
Curious?
N.
I wonder if there is a change in the tax base at work in your county. Is that a possibility?

[niankhsekhmet.livejournal.com]

The piece of property is actually two parcels. The one piece is 1 26th of an acre, it is sort of triangularly shaped and butts up to a property that adjoins mine and one that two brothers, now deceased, defaulted upon. I missed being able to purchase it by a week. I found out the owner in FL and found that my nieghbor up the road had bought it. This neighbor, the husband, is sick with cancer. I am very sorry about that, but I would buy the property outright rather than have someone take it and develop the two parcels into one parcel.

I just went to the county, and apparently it was zoned residential. Now all I have left to do is make one hell of a border of spruces and brambles to keep out any would-be encroachment onto my 15 acres. More concernful is if they do decide to build one or two or possibly even three homes on those two pieces of land that butt up to mine, is that each one will have a septic tank, with a septic leeching field. These run downhill....right into the Buffalo Creek. It will be an environmental disaster if that happens, or at best, if the land that was clear cut will now start sliding and the run off creates more soil errosion into the creek. The balance is already delicate there, we have a few fish, but it won't take much to tip the balance until that body of water, too, is dead.

Just a radom thought.

[nemtetsemnewty.livejournal.com]

Niankh, hotep!
(henu)

You wrote (in your response)

The neighbor, the husband, is sick with cancer. I am very sorry about that, but I would buy the property outright rather than have someone take it and develop the two parcels into one parcel.

Well if that is the case, why not approach him with a reasonable offer. He maybe grateful for the offer. If you would rather not approach him
yourself, why not contact your lawyer and ask him to act as your representative in the matter?

Don't give up. Amun is your beloved. Ask him for his assistance in addition to seeking Sekhmet's aid. The land is dedicated to her and
therefore is sacred to her. I am sure she realizes that any harm done to adjacent property would have a negative impact upon the land
that is so special to her.

This is just a thought. Take it or live it as you will.

Senebty,
Nemtetsemnewty

[wingedkite.livejournal.com]

Ow.

OUCH.

ARGH.

:( Very sad.

[henkuyinepu.livejournal.com]

That's terrible that people cut down all those old trees. It's horrible when people shoot animals because "they're encroaching on my property." Excuse me, they were there first, so technically it's their property. Most humans tend to forget that the animals keep coming into our space because we keep taking away theirs. They lose so much of their habitat because most humans feel the overwhelming need to destroy anything they can to show they can rule nature. I just wish that nature could fight back by having deer go burn a poachers house down or something, and then plant trees there or something to take back what was rightfully theirs to begin with.
What is worse though, even if you did win the lottery and bought all that land, the government can come in a forcefully buy it. Then, you'd get a fraction of what you paid for it, and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it. Gotta love the way the government works.
Just my 2 cents.

[ndnize.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that I too have deer and fawns resting in my back yard. I'm lucky I live in an area where most of us want to keep things green and healthy.

Oh yes I know....

[selenajade.livejournal.com]

We have a mere 12 acres and often my parents and I have felt the same thing....like we live on a patch of sacred ground with the rest of the world hawking in on it all the time. And many times we have gathered to comfort others grieving over the death of a tree. I dont know how my child and I will be able to take care of this place after my parents are gone, and I cant promise my green things anything. It is very difficult, especially when one has a close connection with the plant world.

And I have nearly chopped off my husbands fingers as they went to unthinkingly uproot a dandelion! (we dont have a conventional "lawn" either! )

Nebt Seneb,

SJ