Discussion

I was pruning the shit out of a flowering cherry on the berm.... Over the years it had thrown up suckers from below the graft which had grown thick and bushy. The flowering scion was being strangled and the neighbours had trouble seeing coming out of their driveway.

As I'm lopping the limbs before getting out the pruning saw, dude is walking past, we say hi, he lives on the next corner. Yikes. I've seen election posters for crank fringe parties on his fence. But then he says "I've got forestry loppers in the garage, I'll be right back" and five minutes later he returns with the biggest scariest loppers I've ever seen, forget cutting off a toe, you could cut someone's foot off with these...

... and he just works with me on this cherry, and the rogue shrubs and trees coming over my front fence for about an hour and a half.

And we're chatting about the neighbours and gardening and he's a bit too worried about crime IMO but I keep it light and by the end, man he's saved me an afternoon's work. And we've swapped numbers and who knows, maybe I can work on him.

No real moral here. I'm generally live and let live. And this is how we preserve the community.