Standing for What is Right - When Neighbours Litter on Your Property - Ep 23

Today marks 10 months since our neighbour started sending ground up plastic weed barrier to our property.  In today's episode I discuss the impact this pollution has caused to us, both physically and emotionally.  I also share stories from years gone by, where backyard conflict ended with positive resolution. Have a listen to our story, and know that my goal as always is for a peaceful resolution.  It takes no energy to do nothing, and sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone to do what is right.  

Transcript

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Hey everyone, it's Lindy here. Welcome back to the podcast. About time I got back in this little podcast chair, I got kinda busy last week and I didn't get my podcast out last week, but today I'm back at it and I got a story to tell. Okay, but before I get started, if this is your first time tuning in, just a quick little note about me. My name is Linda Leverman. I'm the creator and host of this podcast series. I was born and raised in the Yukon, and my childhood years were influenced by the joy and the challenges of growing up in a northern community. I was really lucky to live there. I now reside in beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island in Western Canada. I'm lucky to live here also. And my podcasts are a hobby for me. I do this for fun. It's a creative outlet. I'm also a creative writer, and I self-published a book of short stories a couple years ago, but all of this is a hobby for me. I just do it for fun. I didn't get a podcast out last week. It's been super busy for me. This is garden season, yard season, and I was just so busy the past few weeks. Most of it was yard work, but there's another situation that's taken up a lot of my time. It's awful. It's a situation where this little old Generation X gal had to come to terms with either I'm gonna put up with what's unacceptable, or I'm gonna have to try to put my anxiety at bay in order to do the right thing. If you have anxiety or you've ever faced anxiety, you will understand what I'm saying that sometimes that can be really challenging. I've been faced with a difficult situation over the past year, and it has taken a toll on me emotionally. In fact, I said I, I should say we because it's affected both of us who live here. If you've ever been involved in conflict with a neighbor, you're gonna understand how draining it can be. I can't get into all the specifics here, but I'm gonna say it has to do with a steady influx of pollution coming to our property. And the only ones who are doing anything about it are us. Yeah, it began ten months ago. Literally. It was ten months ago to this day when it began, and we came home one day from being out and went into our backyard and it was just covered in pieces of shredded plastic. It didn't stop there. We have picked up thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of shredded plastic from our backyard over the last ten months. We can pick it up one day and the next day it's back in. I can mow our lawn, and sometimes before the job's even done, more pieces are coming up to the surface. Either they're blowing in from the nearby property or they're now coming out from where they've been buried. We're the only ones picking it up. The bureaucracy in place isn't working. And it feels to us like nobody gives a hoop that this is happening to us. They don't care. We're just a number. We're just another person on hold in a system that's not doing its job. That's how it feels to us. We're just another number. We can no longer compost our grass because it's full of shredded plastic. Our landfill doesn't take plastics, whether it's regular plastics or biodegradable plastics. You cannot send plastics to compost to our landfill. They don't take it. So what do we do now? Well, we can't compost the grass on our property because then we're burying plastics on our property. And we can't take it to the compost facility, so guess what happens now? All of our lawn clippings have to go into a bag with all the plastic in it, and we gotta take it to the landfill. It's going to the dump. I mean, mow goodness, you know, we're in this day and age, we're supposed to be trying to compost things, and we can't do that because our grass is full of plastic. Okay, so, and this also bugs me because we've tried to compost our grass in the past or lean it out on the ground, till it in over the top a bit, try to help build up the soil, and now we can't even do that. And I can sit on my hands and knees and try to pick up plastics as I spread the grass on the ground, and I've done that. I've taken a lawnmower bag, spread it on the ground, and sat down on my hands and knees picking out the plastics, um, just so I don't have to bother taking it to the landfill. But I'm not doing that anymore. I got some nasty bug bites on my legs, and and I don't have the time to sit and do that. So what are we doing? Yeah. We're taking it to the landfill because we can't keep up with it. And you know what's really frustrating about all of this for us, and yes, I am venting here a little bit today. The only agency that can help us with this, the only one that has the authority to help us with this, has not sent anyone to see what is happening, despite being aware of it since late last summer. So here we are left to pick up the pieces on a mess we didn't cause. And this isn't the only issue, and I'm not gonna get into all of it here. I mean I try not to air all my dirty laundry on the podcast, but the reason I'm sharing this story today is because I want to talk about standing up for what is right, and good gosh, I have discovered it is not always easy to do. This has been a nightmare for us. Okay, so like people make mistakes. I've made mistakes in my life. We all have. I mean, sometimes we do something, oh my gosh, I shouldn't have done that, and you try to fix it, you try to rectify it. But a mistake is only a mistake if it happens once and you do something to remediate it or you do something to rectify it. If you continually repeat the action though, and you know that your actions are going to have a negative impact on someone else, hey, that's not a mistake, that's intentional. I remember years ago, there was a time when we had a construction company building a brand new duplex in our neighborhood. Okay, so this was many, many years ago, back in my previous life. And I had young children at home at the time, they had to go to school, and I I can't remember all the specifics, but I remember at that time, I think our noise bylaw at our city was something like you couldn't make noise after eleven at night. And it was getting really noisy. I remember back then the hammers were going, there was drills and electric saws, and oh my gosh, it was loud. It wasn't pleasant. But you know what? I tried to be understanding, because in the north your building season is limited, and I knew they were trying hard to get the job done while the weather was good. I understood that. But I was getting really frustrated with it at the time, and I didn't want to be complaining, and I didn't want to get on the bad side of a bunch of guys I didn't know. I didn't want to be rushing down to bylaw and making life difficult for someone who's just trying to earn a living. But at that time, as a parent, I also needed to make sure my kids were getting to bed on time and getting adequate sleep for school. And it was getting harder to get my kids to go to sleep because yeah, these hammers and saws and stuff were going till 10, 10, 30, 11 at night on school nights, and it was loud. I remember at that time I talked to one of my sisters, and I said, like, what do I do about this? And she says, Well, you know what? Sometimes in life you've got to treat sour with sweetness. Aha, okay, so she helped me form a plan. And I made some really good chocolate chip cookies, and the next night I waited till the crew was on a break, and I walked next door with a plate of warm cookies. I introduced myself as a neighbor two doors down and said, Wow, my gosh, you guys have been working so hard. Hey, I made you some cookies. I hope you enjoy these. They're really nice guys. They were super appreciative and they thanked me. Then I said, Oh yeah, I said I was also making them for my kids' lunches. I said I try to send homemade cookies with them to school, and I thought AI could share. Then I asked, hey, out of curiosity, how much longer do you think you're gonna need to be doing this at nights? I mean it's really been hard trying to get my kids to go to sleep on school nights, just you can really hear the saws and everything. One of the guys was really nice, and he apologized and said, you know what, I think we're gonna try to limit our hours a bit. We're just about done what we've had to do, and we can cut back a little bit. And I I think if I remember rightly, I'm pretty sure he said to me that he had kids too, and he understood where we were coming from. And they were really good about it. You know what? I think it was after that, around 8 30 at night, they were shutting it down, and I really respected them for that. They listened. They cared. And guess what? We had a great relationship after that. I took them more cookies and we all got along great. They waved to me, I waved to them. They were responsive, respectful, and no authority had to get involved. Everybody just worked it out amongst themselves. Yeah, like I said, they were always waving to me, and I'd go by and tell them how great their home looked. And I think back to what my mom used to say sometimes, you know, all is well that ends well. And that was a positive story for us. It was a really good situation that everybody was able to work things out, no hard feelings. I had a run-in with another neighbor many years ago, and this was kind of a challenge. Okay, so her cats were crapping in my garden. I mean, not just like a one or two little log in the garden kind of thing. These cats were just crapping everywhere. And I had brought in like hand trucked in a bunch of sand to go under my kid's swing set, and it was a lot of hard work. We had spent an entire Saturday shoveling in sand to go under the kid's swing, and within a week it was just full of cat crap. And these cats were awful. They they came up on my deck, they sprayed the indoor outdoor carpet on my deck, it had an awful odor on it. And by the time, I don't know, a few weeks had gone by, I estimated these cats had probably done about twelve hundred dollars damage to my property. Now that is the only other time I ended up in a pretty big confrontation with a neighbor. Uh yeah, we tried to talk to it about it with this neighbor and said, you know, you hope you realize that this is what your cats are doing, and she just ignored us and did nothing. And I will confess, I think one time when we ended up cleaning up all the poo from the sandbox, I mean, we had witnessed her cat multiple times crapping in it. We finally put it in a brown paper bag and put it on her side and said, We're returning this to you. We were tired of it. Uh, and and eventually we picked up a funny sign that said, Here lies the last animal that pooped on our lawn, and it it looked like a little grape marker. I mean, it was a cheeky sign, you know? I mean, we're not I'm not a dangerous person, and we hoped that using a little humor would get the message across. Well, we'd already asked her politely to stop the cat from coming over and doing all this, 'cause it was causing a lot of damage. But that neighbor, well, she was young. She was new to home ownership, and I don't think she had a lot of appreciation yet for how much this was really costing us to clean up. Yeah, sure, I could scoop up the cat poo from my garden, but I didn't want my kids playing in a litter box, and I wasn't gonna be replacing my deck coverings on a regular basis because her cat was spraying it. That was not in my budget, and my deck stunk after that cat sprayed it. So make a long story short, she came over one night and accused me of threatening her because of the sign on my lawn. Okay. I was a working mum at the time running on pretty much no sleep. I had both kids and dad when she appeared at my door, and I was tired, and I was so irate with her accusation that I might be dangerous because I put a sign in our garden about animals pooping in our garden. I got mad and I told her, like, get the hell off my property. I don't need this. And that's how it was. For two years. No one talked. We drove up in our yards after work, and she looked her way and I looked my way. No pleasantries, just avoidance and hostility. Slowly though, that hostility melted away, and then she landscaped her backyard. Part of her fence needed repair and she faced lots of expenses. We could see that happening. And I honestly think that after she landscaped, and after she had attended to some repairs on her home, she clued in as to what her cat was doing. After that, we didn't see the cat outside as often, and then it happened. I don't know who did it first, but one day she smiled, and I smiled back. Soon the smiles happened every day, and eventually we mended that fence. Okay, not the real fence, but we started talking. I think I asked her one day about a little yellow spider that I saw in my flowers. And it wasn't something you'd normally see in the Yukon. She was very knowledgeable about the environment, it was partly something that she had worked in, and she said to me, hey, I think that's likely a yellow crab spider. She said they sometimes come in on flowers that are brought in on the big tracks. And as we talked about spiders that day, a wave of relief came over me, as I realized the battle at the fence was over. I don't like confrontations. I don't like not getting along with people. Who juts? It's not fun. After that, by the time we moved, she was saying how much she would miss us and how we'd been such a great neighbor. And you know what? I was able to leave that property with good memories and that couple of years where we had some challenges, I'm really glad we were able to work through it. As I share that story, I know right now there is no chance I'm gonna be having a smile at the fence line. I'm not gonna be asking my neighbor what kind of spider I see on my plant. In fact, yesterday I went out to the backyard and as I went near the fence line I did something I never thought I would do, and I am about to confess this on my podcast. I shouted some unkind words because in that moment I had simply had enough. I had taken a few days off from working in the yard because I'm having some allergic reactions right now. I've got some nasty bug bites, and I just needed to stay out of the backyard for a few days. I ventured out yesterday, long socks pulled up over my pants, and I wanted to see how my newly planted flowers were holding up. Oh my gosh. There were plastic pieces everywhere in my backyard. The grass was neatly mowed a few days ago, and now it's got pieces of black plastic shreds all over again. Little pieces, big enough to see, but small enough to mean that cleaning it up involves us bending over again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Yeah, that's what it's been like. And last summer I was telling my physiotherapist how the repeated bending was getting hard on my hair. It was a couple months later when I was in her office, and one day a piece of black plastic was actually stuck on the bottom of my pant leg and it fell off under the chair her neurofice. And I remember looking down going, oh my gosh, it must have been stuck to my pant leg. That's the plastic I was telling you about. Good grief. Look at this, it's stuck to my pants. And my physiotherapist at that time says, Oh, that's what you were talking about. She goes, anyone who had to bend down 500 times in a day to pick this up would probably feel sore, even if they didn't have a bad idea. Yeah. I mean, people that look in from the outside are going, What the heck? And if you're wondering why I'm sharing this story, I'm gonna tell you why. It's because I'm learning to stand up for what is right. This is hard for me. I have anxiety. If you've ever experienced anxiety, you're gonna know how hard this can be. Anxiety is tough. And this conflict with the neighbors has totally affected my ability to sleep. It's infected our enjoyment of our backyard. We can't even enjoy it anymore going out in the back because every time we go out there and there's more plastics blowing around, we're reminded that somebody is doing this and doesn't care what it's doing to us. They don't care what they're doing to our yard. And last night I went to acting class and I couldn't focus. Two hours prior to that is when I went in the backyard and I discovered the area we just cleaned up was covered in shredded plastic. Yeah. So after ten months of requesting that this stops, ten months of trying to lobby authorities to put an end to it, and nobody is dealing with the mess but us. I lost it last night. I am human, and yes, I shouted out some nasty profanities at that fence line that would put me on time out in my chicken coop. That's right. Sure, I cuss in the house sometimes. I don't holler profanities out in my yard. Yeah, I'm a little bit quirky, but that's not something I would normally do. I was brought up right. I was. Uh, and yesterday I had a human moment and I broke. I yelled, and I yelled hard. I'm usually the one telling my partner we need to remain calm. Let's do the right thing. And I suppose yelling last night and shouting out what an effin' jerk a-hole my neighbor is gave me a release that my bike rides just aren't doing for me right now. Did I get it out of my system? Hmm no, but I don't think I'm gonna be yelling at the fence line today. That's not who I am. What is coming to our property speaks loudly to who my neighbor is, and the lack of support from our bureaucracy speaks loudly to a broken system. This past week I was out in the yard and I was watering a small section of grass that I planted. I noticed what looked like a frog in the ground. I leaned down and oh my gosh, it was a little bird. It was flesh-toned, no bigger than my thumb. I looked up in the trees and I could not see a nest. There was no sign of a nest on the ground. I looked around. I leaned down and the little beak moved. Then it stopped. At first I thought, oh no, I think it just died. But then the little beak moved again. And I didn't know what to do with that little bird, and I couldn't just leave it there. It was a living creature. Oh gosh, my heart was beating in my chest. I didn't know what to do. And nearby, I discovered two more little baby birds, but they were dead. One was getting chomped on by some ants. So I went and got my phone and I called the local wildlife recovery center, and they told me I could bring the baby bird in. So I ran in the house and I grabbed a clean face cloth and I put that little baby bird on a facecloth in the box. It was the end of the day, and I had someone coming for dinner that night, and I didn't care if dinner was late. That little bird deserved a chance. So I drove to Mars. Okay, I don't mean the planet. That's the name of the place where they help with wildlife recovery here. And I checked yesterday I called in, and they told me that little bird is still alive. Yeah, after five days. If all goes well, it's gonna be released to nature when the time is right. Will it live? I don't know, but I felt in that moment I had to do something for that little bird. I felt I had to do the right thing. When you stand up for what is right, it can feel good. I felt good about driving that little bird out to the recovery center. I felt like somehow I'd been its advocate, the one that had had its back. We all need someone to have our backs when things are going sideways for us. As for the situation with our neighbor, it's been really hard on us. I know if I put things in perspective to what other people are dealing with, it might seem minuscule to some people. But when it feels like no one has your back, when someone is causing harm to you or your property, the hill can seem really steep. I am grateful for my friends who've seen firsthand what we're dealing with, and they've said, don't give up, this is so wrong. We're in a different world right now. So many differences are leading to conflict. Peace would be a much better option. I go back to the time when I saw a bunch of sea lions on the rocks, and they were all getting along. They shared the space, they were respectful of each other, and their voices appeared to be in unison. I remember that day thinking, if sea lions can all get along on one big rock, why can't people? Ha, anyway. Sorry if this is not the usually fluffy positive let's keep it lighthearted episode. Hoping to still kinda keep it lighthearted and positive, but I had to share the story of what's happening, and I'm sharing it because I'm not gonna give up standing up for what is right. Raccoons. I don't really care for them, but raccoons and rabbits and deer who come through our yards, they aren't looking for plastic for dessert. My hip does get cranky when I have to bend over repeatedly and squat hundreds of times to pick up plastic that's on the ground in my backyard. And I am not backing down. My oldest sister is a strong advocate for nature. She had my back on the playground when I was a kid, and when this whole situation with the plastic started, she said to me, Lindy, it takes no energy to turn your back on what is wrong. It takes lots of energy to stand up for what is right. And my partner said, It's not going to be easy. This is going to be hard, but it's better to stand up than to lie down when something is blatantly wrong. Meanwhile, let's get back to something positive. I gotta share a positive story here with you before I wrap up my podcast today. Remember little Chine? I talked about her in previous podcasts. Now she's the little chicken I talked about. She was the one who was uh bald headed and she was getting picked on by the other chickens when this little flock joined our family. She's the one who had a severe case of bumblefoot. She's a chicken that had multiple visits to the vet. Oh yeah. She's a chicken with a full head of feathers now, healthy feet, and she integrates with the flock and lays the cutest little white eggs. Now that she is healthy, she isn't getting picked on anymore. Not that we can see, anyway. Lots of people said to us, hey, she's just a chicken. I can't believe you're putting so much money into a chicken. Well, we just said, hey, she's not just a chicken. She's Chinae. If it was our dog, we would have done the same thing. And that was hard on us. It wasn't easy, believe me. It was a lot of work and a lot of money to get that little chicken healthy. I mean, we were new chicken owners. We didn't know anything about Bumblefoot. We had to learn what to do to help get her healthy. Uh and we had some really good help. Um but you know, guess what? We had her back. The vet clinic had her back. We did timeouts with the bully in the chicken pen, and now this little chicken has quality of life. They're all getting along pretty good out there, and it's pretty cool. And you know what's even really neat about all this too? Our chickens appear to know their names now. And my partner can go out and he can call Chine, or he can call Laura, or he can call Natalie, he can call them by name. And for the most part, they come running to him when he calls them. Yeah. Chickens are a little bit fickle, and I also think it's because they know he brings the most treats, but yeah. Sometimes I think they just know that he has their backs. I don't want to focus on negatives of what's happening in our backyard today. I want to have a great day. I'm looking out, there's a bit of sun peeking out from behind the clouds. I have lines to memorize. I couldn't even focus in my class last night, and today I'm gonna try to focus on it a bit. I'm meeting with some really wonderful people today who are willing to take time out of their day to help me figure out how to proceed with my next creative journey. So I'm really lucky there are some really great people out there in this world, and I plan to get out and ride my bike later today. That always brings me peace and calm when I can ride my bike. And I will definitely say that shouting out some rude words in my backyard yesterday probably brought me a little bit of peace, but maybe a bit of humiliation too, because that's not really me. And I know we're in a world right now where people have bigger issues than I do. I really do, and I'm I'm not trying to uh make them out of a molehill and I'm not trying to minimize what else is going on around the world. And quite honestly, my sincere wish is that I just wish we could all live together in peace, you know? I wish everybody could be kind to everyone. I wish everybody could just be treated fairly. You know, like my mom always said, if you turn us all inside out, we all look the same. We should all be treated fairly. And that does lead to the line that I always use at the end of my podcast. I always say smiles come in all languages and in all colors. I would like to get back to smiling in my backyard again. Will the fence ever be mended with the neighbors? I doubt it. Not after what's happened, but I would certainly like to see the situation resolved so that everybody on both sides of the fence can live in peace. And so that the animals that come through my yard aren't being exposed to plastics that are floating around. Yeah, I just want to see the whole thing resolved. I I don't want to battle. I just want to be in a world where everybody can get along and everybody can enjoy their backyard. So that's it. That's my podcast for the weekend. I will keep you informed and up to date on what's happening. And uh I just hope that all of this can be resolved and everybody can get back on to living life in peace, because that's how it should be. All right, have a great day, everybody. Uh enjoy your day, be kind, and uh if you can do something really kind for someone today, something that they aren't expecting, please go out and do it. Because as one of my sisters always says, tomorrow is not guaranteed. So if you have a chance today to do something really kind, something nice for someone, please do it. I can guarantee you that you always feel better on the inside when you do something kind. And I don't know how anyone can feel good when they're being unkind. I don't get it. All right, have a great week, and again, the reminder that I always say at the end of my podcast smiles come in all languages and in all colors. Have a great week, everyone.