Another Hit and Run

Today's gardening adventure: another hit and run! (That's a Def Leppard reference--for those of you who weren't paying attention in the 80s--as well as an unfortunate fact.) We live on a corner. The road curves sharply, there's no streetlight to reveal the curve at night, and there's no stop sign to slow people down before they hit it. So, every few years, someone (usually drunk) misses the curve and ends up in our yard (usually in the wee hours of the morning). We must've replaced at least 10 arborvitae over the years, along with several other shrubs and innumerable landscape timbers. This morning I woke up to what sounded like really loud thunder. Instead, it was a hit and run driver crashing into the shed and running over the shrubbery. Take a look:


That's a telephone box in the foreground. The tall green shrub to the left is a mature arborvitae, fortunate enough to still be standing. The blank space to the right used to have about 5 more just like it, but they were mowed down. See them lying on their sides?

Here's a closeup of the carnage:

That big wooden thing is the bottom of our shed.

Speaking of the poor defenseless shed, here it is, just after the accident at o'dark thirty:



I think it looked much better standing upright, don't you?

The sheriff's deputy called us this afternoon to report that the vehicle had been identified -- a stolen van found abandoned by whomever took the joyride through our hedge. If they ever catch him, I'd like to bury him at the base of the remaining arborvitae. It seems only fitting.