Blinded by the Light

So one of the things I really liked about this house when I was shopping was how private the back yard is. High fences combined with trees and hedges made it so that it was basically impossible to see in or out of the yard, and I could prance around naked if I so pleased, and none of my neighbours were any the wiser. This also paired well with the giant wall of windows in the addition room, which did not come equipped with any blinds or drapes; it allowed the inside and outside to blend with each other, without compromising the privacy of the indoor space.

Critical to this privacy was the hedge of mature bottle brush trees along the back fence, which had grown tall enough over the years to need to be trimmed back from the utility lines. It did get a bit of damage during a wind storm earlier this year, at which point it looked like this.

The first sign of trouble was how the neighbours decided to deal with the situation of the broken, leaning bottle brush tree.

They just sawed it off, let it fall into my back yard, and left it there without a single word. Kind of a dick move, if you ask me.

More recently, those same neighbours have been undergoing a back yard renovation, where they've levelled a significant portion of the yard to put in a patio of pavers. This has resulted in them building up the yard on their side of the fence fairly significantly, such that someone standing at the end of the patio closest to the fence now has their head pop up over the top of said fence.

Then just this weekend I hear a chainsaw revving up, and, uh...

Yeah, without a single word to me, they just decided that there's not going to be a hedge there anymore. So now the privacy of my back yard, never mind my living room, is ruined. I also lost a significant amount of shade in my back yard.

For reference, here's approximately what it looks like to peer into the window at the rear of my house, from roughly the top of the back fence.

Yeah, that black blob there is the couch that I used to enjoy laying on without the obligation to put on pants.

Not cool.

The long term plan is to plant a bamboo hedge along the back fence, on my side so that they can't just decide on their own that they want to cut it down. That hedge would be best planted in the spring time though, so for now I need to look at other options.

Thank goodness for Prime next-day delivery.

The new drapes went up without too much trouble, though it took a few hours of fussing around to get everything assembled and in place just right.

At night, things are improved though perhaps not perfect.

And in the daytime, my privacy has been mostly restored.

It's going to take a few years after planting for the bamboo to reach above the fence, never mind filling in enough to provide some privacy screening, so I'll be living with these sheer drapes for a while.

It is what it is, but I'd really prefer if my neighbours weren't complete assholes.