As some of you have already heard, a few weeks ago, when new tenants moved into the building, a large portion of my plants were destroyed or irreparably damaged. I know, it is sad. Brian and I were initially furious, but, with the advice of my father, I cooled off.
We removed a bunch of plants from the garden, the ones that could be salvaged, and moved them up to the fire escape.
At first, the destruction stopped. No children were in the backyard for weeks. Then, one night, we heard yelling in the backyard. Looking out the window, we see a group of boys throwing our rocks into the construction pit. We yelled at them to stop. They didn't. I yelled at the father standing next to the building, he yelled at the kids and they finally stopped.
Fast forward another couple of weeks. Kids have dismantled much of our rock garden. I go in the backyard to work and one girl tells us how they "can't put the rocks back, they are building a bridge!" Okay, I get it. I was a kid once. I told her to put the rocks back when she was done. She didn't. I had to do it. At the same time I had to pick up empty water bottles, paper plates, papertowels and other trash that the neighbors left out there.
Today, Brian was irate. I found him by the window seething. The kids were all out there, digging up his grass, moving all of our rocks to dig for worms.
Now, Brian has removed the table (we bought it), the chairs (we found them) and the lights (we bought them). He put up a sign saying that when it is cleaned up, we will put the stuff back. Do you think we were wrong? This destruction of our work doesn't seem to stop. We tried talking to the parents but they claim to not speak English. We are worried that now that we took the table, they will just leave it a mess and Brian and I will never go back out there again.
What do you think we should do? Do you think we did the right thing? Please leave us a note in the comments.
We removed a bunch of plants from the garden, the ones that could be salvaged, and moved them up to the fire escape.
At first, the destruction stopped. No children were in the backyard for weeks. Then, one night, we heard yelling in the backyard. Looking out the window, we see a group of boys throwing our rocks into the construction pit. We yelled at them to stop. They didn't. I yelled at the father standing next to the building, he yelled at the kids and they finally stopped.
Fast forward another couple of weeks. Kids have dismantled much of our rock garden. I go in the backyard to work and one girl tells us how they "can't put the rocks back, they are building a bridge!" Okay, I get it. I was a kid once. I told her to put the rocks back when she was done. She didn't. I had to do it. At the same time I had to pick up empty water bottles, paper plates, papertowels and other trash that the neighbors left out there.
Today, Brian was irate. I found him by the window seething. The kids were all out there, digging up his grass, moving all of our rocks to dig for worms.
Now, Brian has removed the table (we bought it), the chairs (we found them) and the lights (we bought them). He put up a sign saying that when it is cleaned up, we will put the stuff back. Do you think we were wrong? This destruction of our work doesn't seem to stop. We tried talking to the parents but they claim to not speak English. We are worried that now that we took the table, they will just leave it a mess and Brian and I will never go back out there again.
What do you think we should do? Do you think we did the right thing? Please leave us a note in the comments.
Comments
Anyway, would it do any good to talk with your landlord? You'd mentioned that he was proud of that little area too and showed it off to prospective renters. I imagine he would rather have a nice garden than free-for-all garbage and underwear land. It almost counts as destruction of property, I think, and maybe he would talk to them and even ask them to knock it off. For all the improvements you've made to his building, it's the least he can do. After all, if they're doing that to the yard, imagine what they're doing to the apartment.
That's my two cents! This is why we can't have nice things. Maybe you can hire the mob to send them a "message"...this is BK, after all. :)