When we moved into this fixer Ranch from hell, the neighbors all told us, “Get rid of those trees. They’re dead and rotten.” We ignored them. We figured the trees weren’t going anywhere.

The neighbors warned, “There used to be three. One landed on your living room during a windstorm.” We still ignored them. Removing dead trees costs money. Maybe the trees are on the neighbor’s property. Do it later.

There’s nothing like a couple of hundred foot rotting trees swaying over your kid’s bedroom during a storm to make you change your mind.

Our minds were changed but it still took us two full years to get on the phone and call somebody. The retired neighbor next door, a very can-do kind of guy, said, “I’ll get a rope and you get your chainsaw. We can pull them down this afternoon.”

Charlie was a little hesitant. All I could think of was how much we could save by doing it ourselves. Then I thought about it some more. “We’re going to have our retired, overweight neighbor help pull down hundred foot dead trees?” I said. “He doesn’t even prime his house when he paints.”

I can’t remember how we got up off our asses and called somebody. I’m surprised we still have all our kids. We’ve had a lot of storms.

Charlie says, “I called. I called people the neighbors’ recommended. I called about five companies. No one would touch them, they were so rotted. ‘Too dangerous,’ they said. ‘Can’t climb ‘em.’”

One of the companies scared away by the rotting, swaying dangers in our backyard referred us to someone else. “He’s got a bucket truck,” they said. “He’ll do anything.”

Charlie called the guy. He was afraid to cut down our trees. “The trees are so rotten and brittle,” he said, “that the directional cuts we do to make the tree fall a certain way would crumble. It’s anyone’s guess where they’d fall.”

Charlie, ever the cheap bastard, made a deal with the guy. “If you come and use your bucket truck to fell the trees, I’ll cut them up and haul them away.” He said, “Okay. I’ll pull the dead trees down for $600,” he said, “and I’ll even finish off the rotting remains of the third one.”

He brought over his bucket truck in the middle of the afternoon. For some reason we were sleeping. Charlie was working graveyard and I’m not one to go to bed at a reasonable hour. We put a blanket over the window so we didn’t have to hear it.

The only reason we woke up is the guy’s persistent doorbell-ringing. Apparently he wanted to get paid. While I wrote the check, the guy explained to Charlie how one of the trees barely missed the neighbor’s house in the back. He cut the tree into sections and rolled them over to our yard so she wouldn’t know how close she came to having a sunroof.

Good thing. We’re never sure what kind of response we’ll get from this neighbor.

One Friday night a couple of months after we moved in, I was taking a nap. I had a flexible day job and since Charlie worked graveyard, I was always sleep-deprived from staying up until 4 AM fighting over the remote. I woke up from my early evening nap to the sounds of someone walking around the house.

“Sean?” I ask. I knew the kids were gone, but who else could it be? Sean is the most absent-minded one, so that’s who I assumed it was wandering around the house.

I follow the noise and bump right into an older woman, right in the hallway.

“Can I help you?” I say, still sleepy.

“Oh,” the older woman says. “Is this house sold?”

“Over six months ago,” I say. We had the foundation straightened before we moved in, so there hasn’t been a “for sale” sign out for at least that long.

“Oh.”

She kept walking around like she’s at an Open House. “Can I help you?” I say again.

“Six months ago?” she says. “Has it been that long?”

What do you do when someone walks around your house when you’re napping and she won’t leave? I start walking toward the front door, hoping she’ll follow. She doesn’t. She’s still looking around.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know. So, you own this house?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dolores,” she says. She holds out her hand.

I shake her hand and tell her my name. That’s all I tell her. Please go, I think.

Now she’s looking at the few pieces of furniture we had. Charlie had already started tearing into the walls in the living room, jacking up the sagging walls. It looked like something exploded in here. I can’t imagine what she was thinking.

“This is nice,” she says, patting a wooden barstool. “How much do you want for it?”

“I’m not really selling it.”

“You sure? I’d give you, maybe $20 for it.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I’m not selling it,” I say.

“Do you have other things you want to sell? More bar stools? I’m looking for a set.”

I got her out only by walking to the front door, opening it, and standing outside. If she wanted to negotiate bar stool, she was going to have to do it in front of the neighbors.

Now without the trees, we can see her anytime. I can see her at night, through her open windows. Believe me, I don’t look on purpose. When I’m talking to the stoner kid and his friends in his bedroom, I’ll accidentally look through his window. If I see something I don’t want to see, such as Dolores or whoever lives with her not fully clothed, I’ll say, “Hey, you guys. Look.”

“Eww,” they all say. “Why’d you make us look?”

“If I have to have that picture in my mind, so should someone else.”

A while ago, Charlie sold an old truck to an arborist. He made a deal with him, too. The day the arborist took ownership of Charlie’s truck was the same day three six-foot stumps became three six-inch stumps.

As we did last time we had a yard-full of tree debris, we paid the stoner skateboarder and his friends to load the rotten tree chunks into a trailer to haul away. We had to do it fast.

When we initially felled the trees, we didn’t removed the chunks fast enough. Dolores knocked on the door and told us she wanted them gone before Sunday. “I’m having a brunch,“ she said. At least she knocked this time.

We left the six-foot stumps for so long that Dolores must have grown tired of the view of our ghetto backyard. What other reason is there to buy a big Long‘s Drugs Gazebo?

We never look back. We don’t care if the kids and their friends get their spray-painting urges fulfilled on that part of the house. All the siding needs to be replaced. It’s a big job. It’s not going anywhere.

I decided it was time. Not to fix the back of the house; that would be a big job. I decided to call a stump grinder. We threatened to make the stoner kid and his friend do it with rented Home Depot equipment, but they were too busy eating fruit and watching skateboarding videos to care about earning money.

I left a note on Dolores’ back door, saying she might want to move her gazebo. Stump-grinding might leave some debris on the little naked baby statues decorating the inside of her gazebo.

After leaving the note, I walked back toward our house and had a good look at what she has to look at every day. I can’t say I blame her gazebo purchase. There’s nothing pretty about blue tarps waving in the breeze, barely covering a half-sided graffiti-filled house.

The stump guy was very careful when grinding to keep away from the gazebo, as Dolores wasn‘t able to move it. Charlie put up a piece of plywood to shield the gazebo from the flying debris. She came out and watched for a minute, then went back in. I think she was happy to see some progress, even if it wasn’t a big 8’ fence. That’s what I’d want if I lived in her house.

The gazebo stayed clean until Charlie removed the plywood. The plywood slipped and tore a little hole in her screen. It was really small. Charlie says, “I wasn’t going to say anything at first, but it started bothering me. I lead a chat group at church. There’s enough Christians around doing stupid things. She already has to wake up to the back of our house every morning. I told her what I did.

“When I told her of the tear in her gazebo, I think she was relieved I wasn’t admitting to doing something worse. She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ She didn’t even look at it.”

I think she’s hoping we’ll put up an 8’ fence.