a few post-script notes.
- the dahlias in the backyard have been there for about two years. despite the fact dahlias don’t usually like wet roots, they keep coming back year after year, and will probably continue to do so if you don’t rip them out.
- why would they have wet roots, you ask? the substrate of the garden bed is water-retaining clay, just like the rest of the gardens around the property. but you wouldn’t know that, would you?
- the weird little triangular plants are called ‘oxalis triangularis’. they grow in clumps and pop out pretty little purple flowers every couple of weeks. i expect you’ll probably kill them, but they don’t do any harm.
- the fleshy little plant in the front yard with the tiny red flowers and heart shaped leaves is ‘mesembryanthemum cordifolium’ (red apple hybrid). it is drought resistant, low maintenance, frost tolerant, will spread across the whole area if you let it, and will eventually choke out all the weeds there which have got a regenerative seed bed under the dirt due to years and years of poor maintenance. that’s why we planted it. you’ll probably never know that, and just rip it up cause ‘maybe it’s a weed’.
- additionally, the bees absolutely love them. and we love the bees. more motivation to leave it alone.
- speaking of insects, there are 3 species of wasp around the place.
- the one that hangs around the front door is likely to be ‘epsilon chartergiforme’, an Australian resin potter wasp. judging by the previous nests, her and/or her family have been coming back there for several generations. epsilon are generally solitary, don’t sting unless mishandled, and provide a lot of free pest control. that’s why we haven’t gotten rid of her yet.
- the ones that hang around under the back pergola are likely to be ‘polistes humilis’, an Australian paper wasp. like the epsilon, they’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone, and they provide a lot of free pest control.
- the ones that hang around the back fence and some areas of the front garden are likely to be ‘polistes chinensis’, a Chinese paper wasp. they’re technically an invasive species but i haven’t been able to locate the colony yet to move them on, and i can’t get rid of them other ways without also knocking off the other two species.
- your front garden is full of moth vine. the leaves, stems, fruits, seeds and basically the entire plant is mildly toxic to people and quite toxic to animals. we have spent a lot of time and money trying to remove it. it didn’t work.
- likewise, the back lane has a massive guava tree that’s been removed twice, a carpet of grass that’s come through from the neighbour, about 20 dandelion plants and a bunch of what i think is a variety of cyperus papyrus. and likewise, we have spent a lot of time and money trying to remove it all. and likewise, it didn’t work. we will probably be obligated to raze everything back there to the ground or we won’t get our security bond back, because you’ll contest it on ‘garden maintenance’ otherwise. but i guarantee you the issue will recur. so it’s going to be a huge waste of our time and money. again. unfortunately for us, we couldn’t find anything in the lease contract that exempted us from garden maintenance if the previous years and years worth of garden maintenance wasn’t done by previous tenants. lucky you.
although we technically never owned the house, it was our home before it was yours. on some level, although i realise it’s irrational, i despise you for taking it away from us like this. you all-but-verbal-contract promised you wouldn’t do this. then again, you said the same about not raising the rent, and you did that at your first possible opportunity. so i shouldn’t be surprised.
i suppose this whole thing can be summarised by Newton’s third law. for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. whatever security or comfort you gain, whatever stress you are able to unload due to this, you do so only because we lose security and comfort, and gain stress. yeah sure we are going to another house. but the cost of moving itself is massive, not to mention the new rent will take nearly 70% of my wife’s income. and i’m not working right now. and her work life is chaotic. and she doesn’t have any sick leave to take off to help pack the house. so instead of spending time with each other and our daughter, every spare second since your property manager sent us a cold email termination notice (thanks for that by the way, was a fun panic attack) has been spent talking about, thinking about, planning about and executing this move.
but you don’t know that, do you? you don’t care about that. you don’t care about any of this. any of the things we have learned in our four years living there. any of the things that are happening in our lives. we are just a service contract to you. we are six hundred dollars in your bank account every week, we are residential tenant number 022363, we are your ‘let’s just get some rent off the place until nan flies in’. we don’t matter to you or your management agency. we never did.
i just didn’t expect to be reminded of it like this. two broken promises and a zero-contact fully automated ‘you’re being kicked out, thanks for everything (lol), bye dickheads’ email.
i wonder, if any of you read this, whether it would help you understand the magnitude of what you’ve done to us, or whether you would continue to think that we are being petty and bitter.
we will never know.
