Why Do These People Care?
Why do the neighbors care so much about these trees? Trust all of us, we wish we never knew what these trees were... and we wish we never had to deal with learning anything about them. Aside from the clear safety to our properties (and families), the age and condition of the trees, and the ecological impacts of these invasive trees here's ANOTHER few reasons why we HATE these trees...
this many pine needles - only a few days of wind!
These trees drop the "needles" (branchlets) and the little cones (nutlets) consistently... but... anytime we have any "windy" days, it's severely increased.
This pile of Australian Pine branchlets/needles came from using the blower on just ONE section of our back patio. The battery died before I could finish the job, and the pile got so heavy, that the blower couldn't move them anymore.
Yes, that's right... these things add to manual labor on our part... but also a lot more in costs because they are like glitter... you see them EVERYWHERE.
The nutlets are worse than legos.
Picture this...you live in Florida, and you enjoy walking in either flip flops or barefoot in your backyard... or when you venture into the sand.
Now picture stepping on one of these pointy little nutlets.
OW.
The sheer number of these little buggers that constantly drop and scatter into our yard, patios, and into the sand... makes the enjoyment of walking in our backyard like walking through a lego minefield.
What's worse? When you're actually wearing shoes and you catch one the wrong way... Personally, I've twisted my ankle and nearly fallen several times.
So yeah... it's a safety issue that we're forced to live with.
Un-permitted Work done to the premises...
The owners of this property, aside from being pretty much the worst neighbors we've collectively ever had (in our collective opinions), don't live here. They visit in the wintertime.
It was a family home and they have chosen to rent out their property, which is of course, their choice.
But especially because they have chosen to do so, they should at least have done things correctly - by making sure the work was done with PERMITS from the city when they were making changes or updating their property.
They currently have outstanding open code violation issues related to un-permitted work done inside the property.
We care because we believe if you're going to pay to visit the property, you should be able to sleep soundly knowing that the property is safe... and that any work has been done by a professional, and checked over by city inspectors for safety and quality work.
We have caught the owners of this property MULTIPLE times doing work without a permit, or only getting a permit AFTER they have been caught.
In addition, they regularly skip regular maintenance to the property. They have been cited by the city several times for overgrowth.
Additional maintenance costs incurred
As if the annoyance of seeing these things everywhere wasn't enough... It has cost us quite a bit of money to bear the additional burden of cleaning up or replacing items that were damaged by these trees.
Some additional costs include:
- Furniture cleaning (these needles STICK to the outdoor furniture and STAIN it).
- Additional landscaping maintenance costs to frequently clean these needles off the patio, but also out of our shrubs and landscaping in general (remember, the needles have properties that KILL other shrubs)
- Additional car maintenance... YUP! These needles stick EVERYWHERE... and they get into the cars, accumulate in the windshield wipers, in the trunk (we're still unsure how)... etc. And it requires additional levels of cleaning.
- Paying people to get on our roofs and BLOW the Australian Pine needles (branchlets) off, where they accumulate.
