This should be funny.

Remember when I had that falling out with my neighbor to the side about their hedge? I'd never had a neighbor be a dick about trimming their trees before, so all my neighbors got a visit this summer. OH yes they did! Three of them. Oh yeah, I'm getting it from all sides.

Trees are not a shared expense. Most people actually try to be neighborly and handle them. And even though I'd read stories about people refusing, it was the first time a neighbor billed me for having their trees trimmed.

Since this new tree issue was just a few branches we offered to help the guy trim them. It's about 10 feet of tree on our side, and I was just going to take a saws all to it. The branches aren't even big enough for a small chainsaw. After dealing with him on the fence issue we were more than happy to help him. He's turned out to be a great neighbor.

Today he came over and said that he'd called a trimmer out. When I expressed surprise he said he was going to have them trim the tree that he shares with that neighbor I had a problem with. Their tree is over his fence by probably 20 feet, and he'd been stewing about it for a very long time. When Mr S. hit him up about the fence, the first thing he said when he came back was he had to sit through like 20 minutes of him complaining about it.

He obviously already knows about what happened with them and us, so I don't think he's even going to try and get them to pay. But the branch is a pretty significant one. It's got to be at least 12 inches in diameter. Cutting it will make the tree pretty side heavy. And...people who are shitty about not taking care of their neighbor/tree relations are probably going to feel pretty shitty about a giant branch being taken off their tree.

Of course I had to share a picture of the kind of people the neighbors to the side hire to do small tree trimming. One day I came out and their gardener was propping this ladder onto this branch. On a windy day no less. I had to whip out there and tell him - safety third. The branch in question is the one that juts out to the left. So, it's a pretty big branch.