It began innocently enough, as most major conflicts do, with a small incident. One day I happened to notice that one of the small trees in front of my house had a lemon growing on it. "Nice," I said. Being cheap, and being a budding chef, I was happy to have a little free and fresh produce growing on the homestead."I'll just keep my eye on that little lemon," said Jeff. One day, the lemon was ready to be picked. As I got into the car to take the kids to school I smiled and eyeballed that lemon, "I'm going to pick you when I get home and use you as part of dinner tonight!" I was excited. As I backed the car out of the driveway, I waved to the gardener as he and his crew descended onto the property.
Later that day, when I went to retrieve my little lemon... he was gone! My little lemon I had watched for weeks was gone, gone, gone.
I compared notes with my wife. We were the only people in the neighborhood with an orange tree with no oranges. A lemon tree with no lemons. Oh sure, our grapefruit tree was full of grapefruits but who the heck likes grapefruits? It was pretty obvious that the gardening crew was scarfing our fruit.
My orange tree (above) devoid of anything. My neighbors' orange tree (below), a mere ten
feet away is teeming with fruit.
It was at this point that the trouble began. We decided to ask the gardeners to stop taking the fruit. Now, in an effort at full-disclosure, our home had been empty for nearly a year prior to us moving in. The same gardeners cared for the place the whole time. It would be perfectly natural to assume that the gardeners helped themselves during that time. Why not? The place was empty, take the fruit.
But we live here now. We want the fruit. So one day, my wife happens to pull up in the car when the gardeners and she called the head gardener-guy over: "Please don't take the fruit anymore, we want it. Thank you."
Apparently, we crossed some gardener etiquette/professional conduct/insult line. The man was aghast. "Never!" he says. "Why would risk everything stealing... grapefruits?"
"Well, we're more interested in the oranges and lemons..."
"Are you accusing us of stealing?" The man was livid. The man was practically spitting in my wife's face. The man was full of disdain.
In my opinion, he was feigning outrage, but the gauntlet was thrown down none-the-less. First, they started messing with our trashcans. They intentionally left the trashcan lid (trashcan lid ONLY) open which in our neighborhood is a big risk. Birds the size of small ponies descend on every open trashcan and create a horrible mess.
Then, the leaf blower-dude made a point to create the biggest pile of leaves and dirt and then proceeded to blow them all in our pool. War!
We struck back with the best weapon we have at our disposal: we stared at them with mean looks and shook our heads in disgust. That will show them!
Oh, by the way. In an incredible coincidence, all of our trees now have fruit growing on them.
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