Nature Hater.

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”

Mark Twain

My distant neighbours enjoying a peaceful moment in my forest garden.
The locals understand, unfortunately too many people are coming in with city ideas. 

My husband frequently used to say that the more people he met, the more he valued his dog's company.  I am also coming around to the same point of view.  I couldn't write this post on Sunday because I couldn't see for the feathers I was spitting. 

I live in a forest. We bought a piece of land in 1991, full of pine tress, olive trees, wild bulbs and sakiz bushes (Pistacia lentiscus). Apart from the courtyard and beds around the house terraces, it is totally uncultivated and wild. Each year the emergence of the stately asphodels - the everlasting flower said to grow in the Elysian Fields, red hot and cool pastel anemones, intricate and shy orchids and blowsy poppies is a joy to watch.  I went back to check the house a couple of weeks ago and a lot of bulbs had been dug up and left on the ground. I initially thought the wild boar had been super active but then my nearest neighbour, who, about 3 years ago, built a house near mine, on the other side of the lane, came up to encourage me to admire his work.  He had begun to "tidy" my garden because it looked like a forest.  I went over for a coffee and politely explained that yes it did look like a forest because it was a forest and had been for the 25 years I'd lived here and that was how we, and now I liked it.  He told me he couldn't understand why I wanted my garden to look like this and that it would be much better if a tractor came in and ploughed up the land, and that two pine trees were overshadowing two olive trees and that wasn't good and it upset him to look at them!!!! so could he at least take those two branches off.  I reluctantly said yes to the two branches but that he was not to do anything else.  He wife was also there and she also heard me say several times that I liked MY garden how it was and he wasn't to do any more 'tidying'.   

So when I went back on Sunday to see that all the sakiz bushes in front of my terrace had been cut down and more asphodel bulbs dug up, you can imagine my feelings.  Luckily I was so angry that I forgot the Turkish for at lot of the expletives I remembered and voiced on the way home.  

When my husband was alive the neighbour wouldn't have dared cross the gate. Is this what it is to be from now on?