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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.
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.
