So....

we planted our peach tree yesterday...and for now, we are staying put. It's been a long, heart-wrenching, argumentative few weeks arriving at this decision, but planting our tree means it's time to move on with the rest of our plans. We went through about a hundred scenarios in our minds, we had heated "discussions" and many sleepless nights...all to come right back to where we started, our Home. With much RCMP involvement, By-laws involvement and media involvement(not to mention neighbours) for a few weeks, things got a little too hot for the landlord. The upstairs tenants of Spanglish are out, though they simply seemed to have moved to another of the same landlord's properties around the corner...and the folks he moved in were kicked out of another of his properties around the OTHER corner. It's not that we don't think this same old thing will happen again (in say, three months time? )when the heat is off. It's not as if the store does not present the same old problems... It's just that this neighbourhood, and the wealth of friends, of history, of character, are worth fighting for, at least for a while longer.

The same customers arrive on some sort of cue they are getting from somewhere...like the Bat Signal goes out to all the crackheads that this van (or any other of the dealers' vehicles)has arrived and the operation sets up out front of the store....

lookouts on the alley and on the corners.....

and the stragglers arriving too late for delivery...too bad. But they are gone before the RCMP can arrive. What can you do? They know they are welcome to do that over there...they, and their customers, pay her rent, after all. And? She cries that she is being discriminated against and unfairly targeted by us because she is a woman and an immigrant in the very same sentence she spits out the word "faggot", directing it towards one of our neighbours who has asked her repeatedly to quit selling crackpipes. She sees him as our "ringleader." Don't try and pull a discrimination ploy on us with that nasty mouth! Don't you dare.

***Just a little aside here, the truckloads of garbage that were hauled out of those upstairs units was absurd...and supposedly she is selling groceries downstairs? Oh my goodness and ew!***

So, the battle goes on...as does the gardening, the dog walks, the Sunday Morning Coffee Club, impromptu dinner parties, cherry blossoms, meeting new friends and great neighbours....

See you round the 'Hood, eh?