Dear Mary,
First of all, please accept my “happy weeding” greeting. I know the feeling. I finally have my fence up and it helps separating the weeds (or the beautiful wild flowers as you called them) of the next door neighbor on my East side with my ‘reasonably acceptable’ lawn in my back yard. My east side neighbor is a Vietnamese family and they don’t keep their lawn tidy at all. The weeds are up to my waist and my baby daughter always picked the ‘white’ flowers and brought them into the house, which resulted in the living room filled with pollen and made my nose felt all itchy. I’m glad my somewhat crooked fence is now serving as a shield to keep those wild flowers from invading into my yard. That Vietnamese family also refused to share the cost of the fence dividing our yards. I was so ticked off but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do except threatening to paint their side of the fence in neon pink?
I finally fixed up the ugly cracks on my garage floor. The floor now looks flat but with two vivid light blue scars! (from the cement crack filler I used.) As long as I don’t try to stare at the scars every time I enter my garage, I don’t very often feel like having an arrow shot through my heart! My new house is about six years old but thanks to the cold winter in Alberta, almost every body has cracks in his garage floor. My brother in law’s garage was only built two years ago and the cracks are popping up already.
My fence is finally built. The zoning is a little off (Just like my writing, a little off!) One of the posts next to the back gate is actually a quarter of an inch into the city’s property, I think. And if you don’t deliberately go up to the second floor to look down on the fence, it’s not too obvious to see how it’s crooked. So as long as I don’t try to stare at my fence from my second floor bed room, the throbbing pain in my head is still tolerable, and I can still squeeze out a bitter smile on my face when people are talking about my fence. Hopefully this is the last fence I ever have to build in this life time. And I’m sure when I retire, the horrible experiences of outdoor renovations can be a good topic for my writing career. I may even write long article on this and post on some sort of forum to share with some English learners.
The next door neighbor on my west side is a Caucasian Canadian family, the head of the household’s name is Ian. He has three young blond kids who are playing like crazy with my two kids everyday. Ian agrees to share half of the cost for the fence on his side, so now he’s my favorite guy ;-). After seeing how beautiful my back yard looks when it’s all fenced in, he’s now lifting up the entire lawn in his back yard. He will pour gravel for the front section and lay down good quality sod for the balance. He will also build a fence around his back yard. I hope he doesn’t have problem with the other side of his neighbor. Last time we were standing on each side’s deck and chatting, he told me he’s the fan of singer Neil Diamond and Neil Young, so I sang “O Canada” for about five minutes, he was deeply touched, now he’s also a faithful fan of Neil “Next door” ;-)
Besides painting the deck and sealing the concrete sidewalk and the front driveway, I almost completed all my outdoor projects. All of you may be glad to learn that although I suffered so severely but ultimately survived the excruciatingly painful process of being transformed from a meticulous number cruncher to a clumsy lumber jack! I’ve protected my wallet and I’m now scarred for life!
So I see Ben is having too much fun playing the role of a landlord? I used to help my folks managed a piece of rental property and now I feel nauseous every time I hear the term “tenant”! I remember one of my tenants, a young single mother on welfare, left the house after refusing to pay rent for two months. She actually let her friend stay in the house for a month and that creep totally vandalized the place almost beyond recognition. The court is totally in favor of the renter and it takes forever to get a warrant to enter the house to kick the tenant out. I am neither a good negotiator nor a handy guy, so asking me to be a landlord is like adding insult to injury. Owning a rental property again? No thanks, I have enough headache in my life already.
The house across the street from my house was raided by the police a month ago. They found half a million dollars’ worth of marijuana grown in the basement! The humidity totally destroys the interior walls of that house. Home grown marijuana seems to be a growing problem in my city and I heard the police uses helicopter equipped with special device to detect suspicious houses from the sky.
Mary, you mentioned once that you and Ben are coming to my city on the September long weekend? I was initially invited to a wedding banquet in your city on that long weekend, but now with my Paris trip, in order to take advantage of cheap airfare, I won’t be able to fly back home until Monday night of that long weekend, and I have to start working the next morning. I guess our paths won’t cross this time? My mom, my younger brother and sister will be in your city on that long weekend though, and they may take a few extra days to drive up to Vancouver and Victoria. With a newly built freeway, it only takes an extra two hours nowadays, I heard? Back in 1980, it took us almost eight hours to go from where you are to Vancouver!
I hope things are going well with your new tenants. No pain no gain, I guess having wacky tenants must be the price a successful landlord has to pay in order to reap the long term rewards of rental properties? Perhaps you can share a few hot tips on how to find good tenants? I’m all ears…;-)
Best wishes,Neil
