The "Handy" Landlord

So how did everything turn out from Wednesday? Well, Steven is better. He is still a little congested, but his nose is drying up, his eyes are much clearer, and there have been no more scary red tears.

As for the upstairs plumbing, I have no clue. I know that when I left the house a little after 5, the landlord was still working on it, and when Ian arrived home two hours later, the water was back on. And despite the fact that the landlord and assorted help have been here working on the house and yard everyday (except Sunday), he didn't talk to me about anything until Saturday evening. At that time, I was leaving to go shopping (I needed to get me some sandals as part of my costume for the upcoming performance) and he decided that now he needed to talk to me about some of the things that he and his help had been working on. How he had trimmed some deadwood from a tree in front.

"I wanted to show you how you are supposed to trim a tree. You don't want to cut branches off in the middle of the limb- like someone trimmed those branches. Otherwise the whole limb will die. You want to cut them off the way I did- right at the base of the tree. And now I am going to repeat myself at least 5 times, saying the same thing over and over again. And now I am going to show you the back yard and how my friend- that I now have to pay- has spent 30 hours trimming everything in sight. Look how far back he trimmed everything. I had to tell him to stop, because I didn't want the hedge bushes to be too thin! But look how everything has opened up. What? Another rosebush is gone? The huge shrub? I noticed a couple sprouts back there. It could grow back. And now that my friends have done all this work, I want you to rake up some of the leftover debris and seed the 2 foot dead space that has been left by all of our hard work.

"Oh, yeah. And here is your shark tent that you left out. I noticed that it was full of water, so I lifted it up and put it over here to drain. What, you noticed that the tent pole was broken? Well it was sitting out here for a couple days, and the break could have happened then. I'm sure I had nothing to do with it. I was only helping you."

I think about that time I just got in the car and drove away. I was really mad. I really didn't like what he did to the backyard. In the back yard, a side and the rear are effectively blocked off with an evil spiney shrub that grows 6-8 feet tall in places, and had been growing out for so many years that they were about 4 feet thick in places. I think he is wrong to trim the bushes so severely. I think he may have trimmed too much of the live-giving leaves, and all that will be left are the bare trunks of the shrub. And I really liked the rosebushes. I like them when they fill out with lots of shoots and leaves and flowers. And now they are half of what I wanted them to be, or gone entirely.

To be fair, he was waiting when I returned home to let me know that he would be willing to help pay for a replacement part, but I really didn't want to talk to him still. And now that I think about it, it is rather amazing that he did that, because it seems that in the landlord's opinion, he is always right, regardless of reality.