She writes about her gardening adventures and post pictures of what she grew. Needless to say, she takes pride in her patch of land.
Which is why it’s all too sad when she announced yesterday that DM Tree Services ruined her beautiful little garden. Without her knowing about it, they came to remove a tree from her neighborhood and destroyed what she had so lovingly created.
I hope she complains. Not only might a bad review for DM Tree Services save another garden enthusiast from a similar faith, but she might get reimbursed.
I’m a firm believer in complaining.
While living in South Africa I had a fridge delivered to my house. In the process, the two delivery men broke my miniature rose tree. The stem of the tree snapped right in half.
I was furious. For five years I had tended to that tree. Watered it, giving it fertilizer and covered it in winter to protect it from frost. In return the miniature rose tree gave me tiny pink roses everybody commented on. And now, in a matter of seconds my beautiful tree was dead.
When the men didn’t even apologize, I picked up the top part of the rose tree and drove to the furniture store, still fuming as I sped down the street.
When I arrived at the store I marched inside and demanded to see the manager.
“You’ll have to wait,” the receptionist told me. “He’s on the floor with a customer.”
Waiting … I didn’t think so.
Rose tree in hand I went in search of the manager and when I found him I indicated that I wanted to speak to him.
He excused himself and came over.
“Look what your delivery men did to my tree,” I said and all but shoved the roses in his face. “Instead of staying on the driveway, they trampled through the garden and broke this rose tree.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ll buy you a new one.”
“You’ll do more than that,” I said. “This tree is five years old, I love that tree, I raised it since it was little more than a twig. It grew into a prize tree that was going to be featured in a local magazine.” (Okay, so that last statement was stretching the truth a little but I figured, in for a penny – in for a pound.)
“How about if I give you 100 Rand,” the manager suggested.
“How about you give me 1000 Rand,” I countered. “This was no ordinary rose tree.”
“Will you settle for 500 Rand?”
I thought about it. 100 Rand for every year the tree had lived ... it sounded reasonable, so I said “Deal.”
Considering that a new rose tree would cost me around 5 Rand, this was a good deal.