I feel like I am at war with the landscapers here.

The suburb that my m-i-l lives in is a fairly prosperous one with large old well kept homes (except for hers) and immaculate lawns. The landscaping is often the instant kind - full grown plants and sod are brought in. Some houses have gorgeous older plantings and trees but they are not always appreciated. The next door neighbors here recently cut down a stunning enormous and healthy tree to make way for a renovation/addition that they might do. I'd have moved before cutting down that tree.

Most homes have landscaping companies come through once a week to keep everything just so. Until last summer, my m-i-l's house never had the benefit of these landscapers. The grass would grow to your knees and it would be spotty for the leaves that were left on it year round. However, the soil all around was rich and wonderful and there were many thriving shrubs that benefited from the decades of leaf mold.

Last summer the landscapers were hired and everyone appreciates having the grass cut regularly, but there are these things that they do that drive me crazy. Mostly the whole thing is just so overdone. They come through with lawnmowers and leafblowers and weed wackers and edgers every single week on every single house. If the windows are open, the leafblowers fill the house with gas fumes. It's all just so unnecessary. I want so badly to demand that they just cut the grass and NOTHING ELSE but it's not my house and they don't work for me.

Twice now they have weedwacked hostas that I transplanted. They looked a little spindly because they were brand new transplants, but I thought it was pretty clear that they weren't weeds. After the first time it happened I told the owner about it and he was defensive and told me that they would die back anyway. Well yeah, but not in September. Then it happened again in another place. I haven't said anything.

A couple of times my m-i-l has asked them to trim the privet hedge that circles the house. They trimmed EVERY bush around the house and a dogwood tree. They didn't prune the tree, they trimmed it like a bush. Last summer a row of hydrangeas didn't bloom because all of the buds had been trimmed off.

I have come to see the landscapers as a destructive force.

This morning I woke up to the neighbor's house being thoroughly leaf blown and looked out at our rich collection of leaves in the yard. It was killing me to think of them all being hauled away when they would make such lovely and much needed mulch. I anxiously waited for them to do our yard so that I could ask them to not take them away, but to just blow them into a large bed (the site of the hosta massacre) around Aidan's sandbox. I was anxious because I feel like I'm talking to an adversary. I'm trying to nurture the plants and they are trying to kill them.

I had to leave the house with Aidan before they got to our yard, so I hunted down the owner to try to explain about the leaves. I told him that I didn't want them to take them away, that I wanted to use them for mulch in the beds. None of the fancy schmancy landscapers around here uses mulch so I didn't know if he would even know what I was talking about, but he agreed and I left hopeful.

When I got back, I didn't see the leaves right away and I was livid. The bed that I wanted the leaves in and a spot in the back where we had just planted a bunch of shrubs to make a sort of a woodland garden were completely naked of leaves. I ranted and raved to my sister-in-law and she pointed out a pile of sticks and debris that we had cleared away to plant the shrubs. That's where the leaves were, mixed in with all of the debris. Totally nonsensical, but at least they were still there.

I am sure that the landscapers think I'm bananas, but it would have been worse if I had gotten to them before my sister-in-law got to me.