Thought of this thread today:
There is this 84 year old Polish woman, Gladys, who lives next to a 96 year old woman, Iva, who I do yard work for. I was warned that Gladys would try to get me to work for free, I was told she was crazy, but found her to be more conniving: she knows exactly what she is doing.
From day one Gladys has been trying to get me to cut this strip of grass next to her house and would get very angry when I didn't. I soon started finding piles of garden debris and trash thrown in Iva's yard and after many frustrating weeks I finally caught Gladys red handed. I confronted her and very quickly the situation exploded with Gladys screaming sometimes in English, sometimes in Polish, about the strip of grass! Gladys' daughter came out, apologized, and explained that her mother was beginning to mentally decline. She took her mother inside and began shouting that they didn't own the grass strip and not to dump on it. Errrr...What???
Turns out the grass strip was actually Iva's property
. Then I felt really bad. I started cutting the strip and the dumping stopped
(so I thought)
So today I was removing leaves. I removed every leaf right up to the property line, then moved to the other side of the house. I discovered that huge piles of grass and shrub clippings had been dumped behind Iva's garage. The piles looked as though they had been there all summer-so Gladys had not stopped dumping but had just hidden it better!!! I walked back to the side garden to find Gladys furiously sweeping leaves out of her yard into Iva's
Try as I might Gladys would not stop! I thought about my options: Gladys' daughter was not home, I couldn't really call the police...and I did not have the time or the energy to clean that whole side of the yard again.
This is the bastard part:
I looked Gladys in the eye and said, "All right! Fine!" I marched to my truck, grabbed my very large, very powerful leaf blower, fired it up and proceeded to blast the tens of thousands of leaves that I was about to bag into every corner of Gladys' yard. 16hp gas-fired-engine leaf blower vs 84 year-old-lady with a broom = no contest.
I then shut off my blower and continued raking and bagging the now greatly reduced pile of Iva's leaves. The look on Gladys' face was reward enough.
Gladys' daughter came home minutes later, I approached her and she immediately held up her hand and began apologizing, she said she had seen her mother sweeping leaves into Iva's yard and her husband would clean them up Saturday. Gladys started shouting that I had filled their back yard with leaves and the daughter started shouting back that I had done no such thing.