"Just walk away" --Kelly Clarkson

[Who doesn't want helpful advice?*]


It is a long holiday weekend and we are lazy for 90% of it but on Sunday we decide to take a run at Holly GoHeavy, the two-story holly in our front yard. We decide that we will prune her two feet in in all directions. Well, all but the roots. They can stay.

We get the ladder out. We get the loppers out. We get the shears out. We get the heavy duty gloves out. And we go to town. Which is to say, the Hubs gets down to work and I do my usual impeccable job of supervising and picking up debris.

All goes well for 15 minutes. But, alas, we are in the front yard. Read: in clear view of the neighbors. And they are helpful neighbors. Very helpful neighbors. They all have tools to help, which is great! And they can't bring them over fast enough, which is great, I guess... And they all want to stick around... and supervise... which is terrible. How many obnoxious overseers does one job need?**

How does one say, politely, "Please, just go away!"? I wouldn't dream of going into someone's yard and telling them how they should prune their shrubs, much less taking tools out of someone's hand to do it. Oh, yes. It was like that. I finally went inside and left the menfolk to sort out just how fluffy Holly should be. This was totally unfair to the Hubs but necessary in order to avoid a neighbor having a terrible accident with a lopper, if you catch my drift.

Which brings us to the question du jour: What do you do when your neighbors are TOO helpful?



* That would be me.

** That would be one. Yup, still me.