Crooked Little House

There's a house in an adjoining neighborhood whereby I sometimes walk the dogs. Big brick home, relatively-modern, close to the park. Two-story, probably set somebody back close to a quarter-million.

Some new folks moved in recently, and the first thing they did was cut down the big, beautiful oak tree in the front yard. I thought that was a shame, but maybe they were worried it would fall on the house or somesuch, so I shrugged it off.

Then they decided to do some yard work: A knee-high ornamental brick wall by the sidewalk; a short fence along the driveway, and a taller one next to the house, with a decorative slat-top, bound by a running top piece.

Crappiest work I can remember seeing in a long time. All of it.

The bricks are crooked to the point of higgledepiggly, and whatever mortar mix they used apparently turned to sand as soon as it dried. 

The fence is worse, no two slats in the upright seem to be parallel, and the effect is something like something you might see around the abandoned house that the kids dare each other to approach in the horror movie ...

Apparently the terms "square" and "level" never crossed their minds.

When you look at how Tobacco Road the construction is, the tendency is to use that to explain cutting down the oak tree. Yeah, you think, doesn't surprise me ...

Now, to be charitable, it could be that the fellow who moved in and who did the yard work has some kind of disability, and he did the best he could. And that he doesn't notice that it's not very good. And nobody wants to be the one to tell him.  

Could be a lot of things, but it goes to show that having a nice place doesn't automatically confer the ability to keep it looking that way ...