2008 Woodie Awards
Tree thieves strike peaceful neighborhood-news at eleven
Jennifer McCafferty '07
Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Portfolio
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My parents aren't big on landscaping our lawn. They usually have their preferred shrubs and flowers, and they have the capability to make them look pretty. However, they tend to shy away from recreating the hanging gardens of Babylon in our little suburban yard. They leave that to Fran and Stephen.
Fran and Stephen are the neighbors who own the house behind us. They're lovely people, to be sure. The day we moved into our house, they knocked on our back door after the movers had left to introduce themselves and to offer a homemade blueberry pie. That's just the sort of people they are.
However, they're also slightly eccentric, specifically in regard to their garden. There is no fence to divide our yards, but to build one would simply be redundant, for there is no question as to whose yard is whose.
While my parents cultivate a prim little patch of low-maintenance flowers, Fran and Stephen labor intensively over a botanical masterpiece for which the people living in bio-domes would kill. Lush, thick grass gives way to vast, geometrically perfect beds of exotic flowers and rare shrubbery imported from various parts of the world, creating a continuous spectrum of color that gently waves when the wind blows.
It's quite impressive, but sometimes one wonders whether Fran and Stephen are really in control of their garden, or if their garden has control of them. They spend hours working on it, coaxing whatever beauty they can out of the soil, and I'm convinced they've spent at least half their income on Miracle Gro. Occasionally, they even turn down invitations in favor of gardening.
And then, of course, one needs only to consider the tree thief incident to truly get a grasp of their obsession.
A few summers ago, my dad was sitting on the back porch, sipping lemonade and reading the paper as the sun began to set on a long, hot day. He had spent the afternoon tending to our own yard, mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges that hadn't died yet in the heat, and he was just beginning to relax when there was an audible gasp from somewhere in the dense greenery of Fran's and Stephen's yard, followed by a shriek.
Fran and Stephen are the neighbors who own the house behind us. They're lovely people, to be sure. The day we moved into our house, they knocked on our back door after the movers had left to introduce themselves and to offer a homemade blueberry pie. That's just the sort of people they are.
However, they're also slightly eccentric, specifically in regard to their garden. There is no fence to divide our yards, but to build one would simply be redundant, for there is no question as to whose yard is whose.
While my parents cultivate a prim little patch of low-maintenance flowers, Fran and Stephen labor intensively over a botanical masterpiece for which the people living in bio-domes would kill. Lush, thick grass gives way to vast, geometrically perfect beds of exotic flowers and rare shrubbery imported from various parts of the world, creating a continuous spectrum of color that gently waves when the wind blows.
It's quite impressive, but sometimes one wonders whether Fran and Stephen are really in control of their garden, or if their garden has control of them. They spend hours working on it, coaxing whatever beauty they can out of the soil, and I'm convinced they've spent at least half their income on Miracle Gro. Occasionally, they even turn down invitations in favor of gardening.
And then, of course, one needs only to consider the tree thief incident to truly get a grasp of their obsession.
A few summers ago, my dad was sitting on the back porch, sipping lemonade and reading the paper as the sun began to set on a long, hot day. He had spent the afternoon tending to our own yard, mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges that hadn't died yet in the heat, and he was just beginning to relax when there was an audible gasp from somewhere in the dense greenery of Fran's and Stephen's yard, followed by a shriek.