Bob and Sara became our neighbors when ten years ago, they
purchased a little salt box style house at the end of our street. Over the
years, they added a room to the upstairs and converted it to a master bedroom. Both were golfers and their front yard looked
like some of the finest fairways I’ve played.
They enjoyed a weed-less lawn that Bob religiously mowed and edged.
In the front yard was a Japanese maple, the kind that grows
like an upside-down umbrella. Bob even
hired a Japanese gardener to trim the little red maple. Bob and Sara were from Phoenix
and after awhile, came to miss the Arizona heat and their family still living
there. Up went the For Sale sign and
after a considerable amount of time, in a buyers real estate market, the house
was sold. Bob and Sara said goodbye and soon the new neighbors moved in.
One day while walking the dog past Bob and Sara’s old house,
I noticed the little red maple that had been watered by lawn sprinklers was
gone. Soon all the grass was stripped away by sweaty, shirtless men and a drip irrigation system was installed. Next, a
load of slate was delivered and soon more sweaty men built paths paved with
slate between new mounds of fertile dirt.
I asked the new neighbors about their plans and they said they had
always wanted a flower garden and that’s what they were building. The flowers
are in now and they may bear flowers and aromas for nine months out of twelve.
Isn’t it odd! One man’s tree is another man’s thorn.
