So yeah, I'm getting a grip. I'm lining up the acceptance modules. Pragmatism is on order. I'm drawing the zen bubble around myself.
I was away for a week. And on returning home, I was faced with this newly dug crater next door. Crater? It measured about 60' X 20'. It matched the other former crater (now a ginormous shed) up the hill beside my tigeen in size. Oh lawd, sez I, another mother of a shed, this time plonked beside my house. Many more trees had been removed. Some extraordinarily old, over 100 years. A great wind barrier against the fierceness of the weather which at times blows in off the ocean. Now gone. Irreplaceable.
Yes of course outrage set in, rapidly followed by a kind of hopeless depression as the people who bought this land many years ago are perfectly entitled to do what they want with it as there are no land use regulations or zoning laws in this town. It's a haphazard mix of commercial and residential. Even though industrial blazes in the past have nearly wiped out the residential sections. I've brought up this high risk zoning on more than one occasion to be met with raised eyebrows and zero interest in changing the status quo.
So now I listen to happy residents sawing up these beautiful old trees for winter fuel and the sounds of diggers all days long, adding to the fill across the read which may accommodate more sheds.
I propose the new name of our lovely old town could be Shedsville.
So there you have it.
Ahhhh, my heart goes out to you. Just relocated from a town in eastern Maine on the ocean where we lived & had invested all of our money on fixing up our 1800's cape. Despite regulations each neighbor to the sides of our home did exactly what they chose without ramifications. One was to have replaced a small kitchen whose footprint was pleasing. Instead she added on an entire small house with an architecturally disgusting tower. Then she didn't bother to fix the side facing our home. The other neighbor had a garage about 15 feet from our property line and put up a 2 story garage approx. 5 feet from our property line. Next, they had delivered one of those prefab tool sheds and plopped it in the small yard. They also attached a small greenhouse from old windows to their old garage. They burned their trash in a large barrel (illegal) & wouldn't open the door when the forest warden knocked. They did whatever they wished. I thought I'd wind up having a nervous breakdown. Finally we moved this year to the tune of losing over $80k in renovations and we're retired. A huge loss for us but we're saner now and not having to see them or their various ugly buildings is wonderful. Wish we'd been able to sell earlier. It was ten years of absolute hell living next to them.
ReplyDeleteI am so very sorry to hear this, what a nightmare! A few residents have left our town taking enormous financial losses due to this family (old merchant) who don't live in the town but buy up dwellings+land, tear them down-and put up the biggest sheds I've ever seen. This is what happened next door to me on the two adjoining 7 acre lots. They don't care. And have a huge collection of "toys" and equipment, roar up and down the bay in speedboats, etc.
DeleteIt's a sad comfort knowing I'm not alone in this. One of the women in my town has died from cancer, some say brought on by their clapping a huge Nissen hut up against her property line then another across the road from her cutting off her ocean view.
Glad you're OK now.
XO
WWW
Oh dear, oh bugger!
ReplyDeleteThat’s the trouble, you never buy the house next door and its excrescences. Nor the views. We too learnt that to our dismay. After a while we moved and left them to it. A shed big enough to house a family they had built, right across our view. We were furious but there was nothing we could do.
We are now in a place which belongs to English Heritage and a Duke. We simply hope that the land will not become building land, although the Duke has tried and EH are definitely feeling the pinch of austerity.
Perhaps we’ll be dead and gone before the worst happens. I cannot see both of us moving elsewhere; one of us, the leftover one, will probably have to, the place being too big and expensive for one.
Good luck to you. Do you know the neighbours? Can you find out what they’re planning?
I know these people but they are not neighbours, they live elsewhere, see my reply above to Anon. They tears down the beautiful old houses, clear cut the land and thrown up enormous sheds to hold their "toys". It is landscape pollution of the worst kind.
DeleteXO
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I recognize the feeling ... I've had it when the owners of neighbouring land bulldozed trees down along the road where I walk most every day. I also feel it when I'm driving along and see wide swaths of trees knocked down to make room for crops. It's just ... it's ... it's ... such a shame! And here too there is nothing to regulate it, when there should be. Landowners aren't always thinking past their own current bank accounts, to the future and the need for trees. It's frustrating to those of us who care about the devastation not only of the soil, which needs the windbreak, but of the habitat for wildlife. - Kate
ReplyDeleteNo zoning?
ReplyDeleteThank goodness Ansa did not have to see this.
I am really really sorry.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate that there are no land use regulations or zoning laws. Which means as you say that the landowners can do more or less what they want. What are the sheds used for anyway? Presumably some function that could easily be carried on 100 miles away. A pity also about the raised eyebrows and lack of concern. Hard to see what practical steps you can take to minimise the damage.
ReplyDeletePhew! There I was thinking of all kinds of dire possibilities and you bring me down to earth with something that I can relate to. When a high end restaurant opened up next door to my home in a building that had never been occupied for thirty years, I thought of all kinds of possible disturbances. The most irritating was loud music which I put a stop to by complaining to the police but after a week of initial enthusiasm, the place has more or less gone to sleep. It is a matter of time before they close down.
ReplyDeleteThat's really a shame to violate nature's environment in such an offensive inconsiderate to neighbors manner.
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