PLEASE WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Let me preface this by saying.. I am a calm person. I don't let stupid little things bother me. Okay, that being out of the way... here is a picture of my yard. Taken last summer. I love my yard, and the trees, when I sit out there it is almost like not being in a city. I always called my tree line, my "Natural Privacy Fence"

We have lived in this house for almost 25 years. We moved in here as newlyweds. We live in a kind of old neighbor hood. We have elderly residents on both sides of us. My husbands grandparents lived here before we did. The same old people live on both sides of us. One of them is an EVIL old HAG. My husband says that even his grandparents had trouble with her and planted bushes beween the yards just to seperate themselves from her a little. We put up a fence about 22 years ago when our first child was little so he and future children would have a safe place to play because we live on a busy street. We put the fence over 3 feet in from the boundry line between our yards because we knew the old hag was a pain in the butt. We don't bother anyone. We wouldn't allow our kids to make a lot of noise so that it wouldn't disturb our neighbors. Back when the kids were big enough to push a lawnmower, the hag would come out of her house to yell at them if they got "grass on her grass". Of course we never said anything, because we didn't want a war with the neighbor. She has never in the 25 years we have lived here said anything nice to us. She is fastidious about her yard to the point of being obnoxious. I swear she had the Chemlawn guy stalking us for a couple of years.. Anyway, as you can see, I have some beautiful trees just to the left of my fence well within my property line. This old witch.. has been after us for years to cut them. But we like them. She asked us last year if she could pay someone to cut them.. we again told her no. .. Sunday evening we walk out back and hear a chain saw. She is over in her yard with some guy cutting things.. Bill said, I think she is cutting stuff in her yard. He went out the next day with the dogs and came in to tell me that she had cut some of our trees down. I walked out today with my trusty camera.. and counted EIGHTEEN TREES AND BUSHES GONE! There would have been more, because I can see cuts in some of the few remaining trees, but the guy couldn't get his saw started. I should have taken pics of the two of them out there.. now I wish I had. Now I have absolutely no privacy in my back yard on that side.

This is a picture standing on my property line. To the left is my fence.. here is one of my trees taken down to the ground. I can't even express how many tears that I have shed over this. I used to sit in my yard in the summer and listen to the wind in the trees, and I couldn't see my stupid neighbor messing in her yard. But.. the days of Miss nice are over. The gloves are off. I am not going to bother telling her off, I will let the legal system do the talking. I have never been like that.. I have let lots of things slide that I have had to suffer for because of someone else's mistake. But what she did was deliberate.. and that makes all the difference as far as I am concerned. She is going to pay for her actions. I hope she enjoys the money she will have to put out to replant big trees where she destroyed mine. And she will have to WATCH them be re-planted. It will never be the same, It took 20 years to grow my trees, and I will be lucky if I live another 20 to be able to enjoy them again. I feel such a feeling of loss. I am just so ANGRY.. and that is a new feeling for me.