Hello! How are you? This spring weather is nutty, isn't it? i hope it means we'll have a mild summer and, fingers crossed, a minimal fire season. (You see, this is how you converse with neighbors. It doesn't have to be about weather, per se, any manner of generic conversation works to ascertain the fact that yes, we DO speak English and are therefore capable of communicating with you. We know at least one of you speaks English because we can hear you gossiping rather viciously on the phone in your back yard.) Your lawn and the exterior of your home look nice as usual. Ours, we know, does not. You may not realize this, (because you've never asked) but we're renovating the interior of our home at the moment. (You probably could've guessed as much when a few months ago we had drywallers coming and going from our house for several days, or when, last August, we removed several truckloads of rubble from the inside of our house, via the front door. I'm surprised you didn't inquire about the source of the rubble, since it was kind of a curious thing to remove that much stone and concrete (and a freaking LOG) from INSIDE a house. i know i would've been intrigued if i saw a neighbor doing so and i would have struck up a conversation about their renovation project. But i've since learned you prefer accusations to inquiries, so, there's that.) Anyway, we realize that, from the outside, we are the unsightliest house on the street. (You needn't point that out, but you did anyway.) What you may not know (because you don't ask) is that inside our house is a myriad of logistical issues that take priority for everyday living, moreso than new siding, exterior paint, and landscaping do. (There's the lack of a bathtub, the drainage and flooding issues, the half of our garage fairly unusable because the previous owners were growing marijuana in it....oh and several aesthetic issues like wood paneling and dirt floors) Being first-time homeowners, (yes, we are first-timers, as you condescendingly surmised in that one letter you wrote wherein you declared us 'overwhelmed' and therein suggested we made poor judgements of our resources when we purchased the house) we have to stretch our dollars strategically, and take small steps toward our goals. We're truly sorry we can't offer a more pleasing landscape for you to live next to. You don't know us well (or at all, see: note about making conversation), but we are visual, artistic people who come from good families with high standards of home and garden upkeep. Being thus, we are embarrassed of our home's unsightliness on a regular basis. (Yes, your drawing attention to its failure to compare with yours does indeed add to our humiliation. No, large amounts of embarrassment cannot be used as currency at the Lowe's Garden Center; we've checked.) Rest assured that when we have the resources, we will attend to the issue with gusto (and we'll pray that it meets your standards of visual interest and environmental specificity because you will no doubt find a way to bring it to our attention (not via conversation, of course) if it does not).
The purpose of this letter was to address your concern over the safety of the public waterway that runs through our property. You may have noticed that the city of Redding, does not attend to or in any way maintain said storm drain. (The absence of their maintenance probably had much to do with its flooding all over our property and the street last March.) There are many things that grow in the storm drain and infringe upon our property and it attracts copious amounts of noisy frogs and various critters like skunks and possums. (In fact, due to the poor upkeep of both the storm drain and our home (under the previous owner), we had both skunks and possums living IN our walls when we moved in. Did YOU have to eradicate wildlife from your home when you first moved in? Again: a little conversation goes a long way in understanding others' situations.) That being said, as frustrating as the storm drain's presence is to us, we refrain from taking extreme measures to deal with it, as we realize it IS a public waterway. Therefore, when someone ("anonymously") filed a claim with the Shasta County Agriculture Bureau declaring that we were poisoning public waterways via pesticides, we were hurt. (We heart the planet, which may be difficult for you to believe since we.....have an ugly house?) We were also a little confused, because by simply looking at the very fertile and thriving plants overflowing from the storm drain, it would be clear that we hadn't put anything in it to infringe upon the natural process of Things Growing. (Yes, we used pesticides (Round-Up) in our yard, because our 'yard' is actually just a plot of weeds. See: Neglect of previous, marijuana-smoking owners. You don't seem to like the weeds so we killed them, lest they spread into your admittedly nice and well-kept yard. The Round-Up turned our yard a lovely, crispy brown. There is a clear line of crispy brown vs vibrant green between the edge of our yard and the edge of the storm drain because we were precise in our application and did NOT spray in the public waterway. Is every member of your family colorblind? If so, that would explain your assumption of our guilt, though it would not explain why you didn't just ask us in person.) Based on the "anonymous" claim to the Ag Bureau, a nice man named Mr. Yingst drove out to our house to investigate and talk to Josh. Fortunately, Mr. Yingst (is not colorblind and) quickly determined that we were clearly within the law in our dealings with the pesky storm drain and our application of pesticide, and that no harm would come to the public or its waterways. (He was quite annoyed, if you must know, at the blatant falseness of your claim. Way to piss off a public employee!) He expressed his sympathy for our storm drain plight and then he apologized for taking our time and left. (i'm pretty sure his salary is tax-payer funded, so i hope you realize how your actions effected the rest of us and Mr. Yingst's ability to investigate legitimate dangers to other public waterways in Shasta County.) We thought you'd like to know the results of the claim. We have the official paperwork if you'd like to see it (though you'll have to come to the door and ask. Verbally. Which means talking to us.).
That's all the business we wanted to attend to with you. Please feel free to discuss any questions or concerns with us. We want to be good neighbors, so if our lifestyle or our pets or whatever are causing problems, we can only rectify the situation if it's brought to our attention. We promise to be as forthright and respectful with you, should the need arise. (Also, get a life. Don't be mean. And buy a house within a Home Owners' Association next time, if you're that concerned with how your neighbors' properties look.)
Sincerely,
The Markles
