Conflict in Paradise

They say that building a house will put a strain on your marriage.  We were off to a good start.  We loved our lot with all of its trees.  We'd paid dearly for them, and Greg was intent on keeping every one of them.   Of course, we also wanted to have a good view of the lake from what would be our front porch.  Greg and the builder started plotting out our spot with string.  We had just started and already we disagreed.  He wanted to save the trees and move our house close to our neighbor's fence.  I didn't care if a tree had to go, I didn't want to be in my neighbor's business.  There was a pool in our neighbor's back yard.  The house was for sale.  I'm pretty modest.  I was just hoping a nudist family didn't move next door with our porch looking over their fence.  I've only thrown a fit for a few things.  This was one of those.  Move the house, or we change plans to a plan that ran front to back.

David, our builder, has been in the business a long time.  He is also a peacemaker.  He found a way to move away from the neighbor's house,  shave off the end of our porch in one spot, and save the trees in another.  Marriage saved.

Following that, we started clearing trees.  Lesson number one:  Be careful who you hire.

David knew this character from Jacksonville.  He'd give us a good deal.  He'd cut down all of our trees, burn them and get us the culvert all for a good price.  We should have had our doubts when he showed up in his dented trailer.  First, he had a collision with one of Greg's million dollar trees.  Pine beetles promptly moved into the damaged tree.  Then, he burned the trees in a huge heap, and left it unmanned for his "lunch break."  We got there that evening to find our new neighbors with water hoses trying to put out any remaining flames.  Not the best first impression.  The next morning, another neighbor came down to let our builder know that our tree guy had attempted to turn around in his driveway and had run over one of his wife's trees.  David gave the neighbor the tree guy's contact information.  The sheriff gave the tree guy a citation.  Yes, sometimes you do get what you pay for.

He did bring us the culvert in one piece.  But the culvert's another story...