Just had a woman knock on my front door and call me a "desecration to the planet" and the "reason the planet's in such distress" out of the blue and feel a little shaken up (although I could have taken her, I'm 'ard, me).
A car drove through our front garden wall in early December. With the holidays and extreme difficulty of finding a builder who works with insurance to fix it and having to deal with insurance, it's not yet fixed. I've been trying, really really trying to get someone and ended up nearly in tears to the insurance company last week and it's getting me down.
Some of our overgrown plants were destroyed - the garden was due for an overhaul and general cut-back anyway. The woman said that I'm a disgrace to the planet, I should save those poor plants and she wants to see it all cleaned up by the next time she comes by. Well, she said more - it was quite a long tirade, but that's the gist. I stood there open-mouthed saying "ok, okaaaay...".
In her defense, it does look awful and I think she would have had a point about the bricks looking bad. After discussing with my neighbours, we moved the bricks off the pavement, but they're not stacked as they wouldn't be stable (there are a lot of kids around and I don't want them climbing on and then falling off or worse, pulling them over on themselves). Anyway, neighbours don't mind; I mind, definitely, but I'm doing what I can to get someone to fix. But the plants?? The plants were going to go anyway and were scheduled to be cut down soon. They're nothing special - some spiky tree things which have taken over and looked terrible and some overgrown shrubs (we were just going to cut the shrubs back).
So, my question is: was she being unreasonable to come up, knock on my door to have a go at me? What an awful woman. What should I do next time? I don't doubt there will be a next time.