For clarity: pictorial evidence of how petty my neighbour is

If you've been following so far, in a case of the straw that broke the camel's back my neighbour finally pushed me over the edge when she rang to complain that I'd removed a 'screening plant' from our side of the boundary without telling her.

If you look in the above picture to the far left you will see a strappy-leafed ginger plant. Ignore the lilly pillies - they are still there.

We removed the ginger plant to make way for the camellias we need to transplant. The neighbour rang to complain. I used my most fierce growl.at.the.children.voice to make her go away.

This is the spot now. Planted out with two beautiful camellias. Cripes I hope they take.


My latest thought is to get that lovely blue shadecloth that builders wrap around building sites and spread it the entire length of our boundary in a 6ft high fence. I'm mature like that.

Warning: Neighbour bites

There is a lot of excavation work happening at our house. Who knew that excavating a courtyard could produce MOUNTAINS of dirt?! Most of the dirt is being re-directed around our yard to even it out.

Along with the excavation a few of our plants need to be relocated away from the building works. We have potted up three camellias and a couple of roses. Today I went to site to direct where to re-plant the camellias (and hope they survive the upheaval). We decided to remove a Ginger plant from near our boundary to insert the camellias as we are slowly building a Camellia hedge which should look fabulous when in flower.

Guess who is freaking out about the ginger plant being removed?

Street cancer strikes again.

This plant was just below shoulder height at its tallest and about 1.5 metres diameter. It was one plant in from our boundary and about to be replaced by the camellias above. Street cancer does the following:

1. Stands at the boundary shouting at the person who is digging out the plant - "You can't do that, I'm calling the council". Apparently being quite abrasive.
2. Then calls me to say "You should've told me if you were removing that screening plant".
3. She told me she had sent a voicemail and an email on the subject.

I may have lost my temper a little. She has form in attempting to intimidate workers at my place and she has been actively dissing our proposed works to all and sundry so I was not in the mood for conciliation.

I told her that I can remove plants on my property as I wish and without interference from her. Further I told her that if she took the time to call the site manager per our agreed process she would've found out that the plant would be replaced by mature camellias. She started with "but but but..." at which point I said "No, this time you will listen to me. I am disappointed that the only time you call me is to complain about inane issues that don't concern you."

At this point she hung up.

I checked my phone for voicemail and emails. None to be found. I feel good that I've stood up to her. Let's see if her husband calls. I hope he does because Firegazer will have fun with that one.

She freaks out about us removing 'screening plants' from our side of the fence. Guess how many 'screening plants' she has planted? None. Not a single plant.

The woman is completely unhinged.

Edited 7 october: I spoke with the site manager today. Apparently she also sent Workcover around this week. What a complete nutter.

How much do you think it would cost to remove asbestos panels from a shed?

Old shed with asbestos panels.

Going...

Going...

Gone!

$5,000

Owch.

Kitchen ... gone!

Kitchen...

... gone!

Meals area ...

... gone!

After two years ... a new dryer

So, what convinces someone to buy a dryer when she has managed very happily without one for two years?

This one. It is the only 6 Star dryer in the world. A heat-pump condenser dryer. No outside venting because it pulls all the water out of the clothes and stores it in the machine. That means you can put the dryer anywhere. We don't have room anywhere else in the house we are renting so it's plugged in next to the computer in the kitchen. Makes a handy printer table.

You can then either choose to have the machine plumbed in like a washing machine to drain the water away, or you can simply empty the container.

The Miele guy said we'd only have to empty the water out once a month but we've already emptied it twice this week. This is how much water comes out of a set of king-size sheets (just under a litre). So maybe once we are back in our renovated house we'll have it plumbed in.

But then, if we can remember to empty the water it is apparently able to be used in irons - and could easily go on the garden.

Downsides?

• Price (don't look it up because you'll realise it makes environmental but not economic sense)
• Weight (at 98Kg it won't go on an MDF shelf, or hang on your wall)

Best bits:

• Power consumption: At 124Kwh per year it draws 1/8th the power of our fridge.
• Installation: I love that Miele send a technician to install and test it in situ.

Oh No! They clipped a BMW

We have dual street access to our property. This is a photo of one of the ways in. It's too narrow to fit the sort of machinery needed for excavating a yard.

So this week the stairs were removed and a road installed. I quite like the road. Am thinking that a paved version of this would be excellent fun for riding one's skateboard/ripstik/insert-dangerous-activity-here.

This is the sort of thing that now drives up our road.

Thing is, the machinery still needs to be craned over our garage to get to the road. On Tuesday one such crane managed to side-swipe the side of the BMW belonging to one of our neighbours.

Luckily not the scary neighbour. But still, not a good start.

Rather than stress out about it I'd rather look at a photo of our magnificent Banksia Rose which was heavily pruned a few months back and has returned with a vengeance.