(You can see the creek which overflowed its' banks and came right up to our fence during a rainfall the year we moved in).When this neighborhood was designed, they left a ravine about the length of a couple of football fields between us and the homes on the other side. Protection from basement flooding.
When we first moved in, the grass in this area was kept manicured. Then a few years ago, the city informed us that they wanted to "naturalize" this area, so they came in and planted a few saplings. As part of this "naturalization" program they stopped mowing the grass, except for three feet behind the fences and three feet on either side of the walkway which rambles through this ravine/greenbelt.
Methinks the naturalization program was really a way to use our tax dollars somewhere else.
It didn't look great, due the overwhelming amount of weeds, but at least part of it was kept short. Then this year to my amazement they stopped mowing behind the fence. There are 10 homes on our street that back onto this "naturalized" area and all of us were very upset with this change in care not to mention fighting enormous weeds spreading seeds to our properties.
After watching the weeds grow to about 4' tall and share many thistle seeds with our lawn, I became fed up and decided to the call the city. I spoke with our councillor and said that this type of weedy mess would not be tolerated by the city if I left my property to grow to such proportions. He promised he would look into the problem and call me back.
Well, just that one phone call did the trick. I was called back by the supervisor of the crew that manages this piece of property and was told that it was a new foreman and crew and the 3' which was mowed last year should have been mowed this year. The new foreman did not know that it was to be cut behind the fences as well. That very day they came out and cleared the enormous weeds from behind our fences.
So the lesson to be learned here ~ make that phone call.
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