I suck at titles, so a new hashtag will do.

Many years ago (7.25), after my mom died and I was flush with inherited cash perfect for spending to fill the hole of her dying, I decided to do something about my yard. I spent a couple thousand dollars on landscaping. I hired a guy to dig up all my grass and replace it with decomposed granite (DCG in professional landscaping jargon). He built a beautiful bamboo fence for the perimeter and lined with side with deep beds filled with big, juicy succulents, bushy native grasses, autumn sage, creeping lantana and towering yellow esperanzas, all mulched with shiny recycled glass mulch.

The day he finished, my neighbor came home and dumped a bag of McDonald’s french fries into the bed. She told my friend that she wanted to pour motor oil into it.

When her mother died, I did not feel sorry for her mother.

Now I find chicken bones in my back yard. CHICKEN BONES in my yard, where MY CHICKENS wander feeling eating bugs and worms; CHICKEN BONES that my dogs could choke on.

Why do my neighbors hate me so much?

And why did my mowers mow down my baby shrubs? Lantana and autumn sage IN BLOOM?

A wish list:

• a 10-foot privacy fence
• my own mower, the machine kind