I would be sooooooooo ####### pissed. That's horrible. But what reason(s) would she have for killing young trees in your yard?
tl;dr: crazy neighbor hates us and our flora
we moved in to this house 8'ish years ago now. it was built in 1923. then, it was a farm. now, it's a house in the middle of a residential neighborhood a mile from downtown. we have 2 giant maple trees in our backyard, 1 large birch. in the front was a massive pine tree and two birch on the side yard nearest the crazy neighbor.
the two side yard birch weren't in good shape. their roots had grown in to our basement walls and were causing lots of water to pour in to the stone foundation. when looking at the place we knew those would have to go.. and we both hated the pine tree. it was obscuring a large part of the house, blocking the sun and contributing to the water in our basement problem.
before officially moving in, we did a lot of work on the place inside. during breaks in the work we'd go out in the yard.. and inevitably this lady and her husband were outside sitting in their driveway. the old guy liked to talk... a lot. nice guy. so we'd chat.
they made it known to us that the maples in our backyard were a HUGE problem for them. these are massive trees. some of the branches extended over the roof of their garage and they were concerned that one day a branch would fall off and crush their garage (possible.. one day). their house was built on the homestead land that we now live on... only, of course, they are separate land parcels now. but the original owner loved those trees and never trimmed them.. so the garage was built under the boughs of the existing maple.
every time we saw them (every day) they would mention that we should do something about the maples. well, we weren't cutting them down.. no effing way.. but lopping off the titanic long limb looming over their garage didn't seem unreasonable. i didn't want to risk a wind shear or lightning strike wrecking their garage either.
so we had a tree service come out and take down the pine, take down the dying birch and chop the offending maple limb.
they took this as tacit agreement that THEY were in charge of making decisions for our yard maintenance.. and began to demand that we make other changes they deemed necessary. #### that.
the wife would tell us what we could and could not do. what she expected us to do with our garden... how she expected us to clear any future planting decisions with her first, etc. at the time i was early 30s, first house, trying to be a good neighbor. she's mid 60s at the time, he's late 70s and very sick. we were trying to play nice so listened and tried to be careful but it became clear that SHE thought she was in control of EVERYTHING we did with our house. i have no idea why but we realized she was totally nuts and stopped giving a #### about what she "suggested".
my daughter was born, my brother and his wife bought us a Japanese cherry tree to plant. wife and i opted to plant in our now clear side yard.. between the two houses.
while digging the hole to plant it... neighbor lady came out and made it very clear to me that she did not like the tree (it was literally a stick with roots) and that it better not be a fruiting tree or there would be problems. it was a flowering only tree. no fruit. i told her to mind her business. she didn't like that.
i figured she'd start making small, petty problems for us as crazy people do. she went full banana and just cut it down one day.
a couple years later my father in law passed away.. we got another tree gift from a different family member. same type of tree. planted it and things were fine for a while.. until it up and died over the course of just a couple days.
neighbor husband had died over the previous winter and the wife basically shut down. we didn't see her for months. figured she was going to shack up and move to a smaller place/apartment. except she was just storing up the crazy apparently.
she HATES my kids. i have no idea why. she's nice to other kids. my kids don't bother her. and mine aren't really outside in our yard much (
"it's boring") to interact with her.
she has poisoned about a foot wide swath of grass between our two yards on the fence line among other minor things done just to irritate.
at this point we're hoping she dies.
at first i'd only seen the name and didn't realize it was attached to the Happy Birthday message. my kid has no idea who he (she??) is. might be a new student. not sure. i'll be finding out, though. might be worth joining the PTO just to find out.
