So it was that some years later, Sage Construction Company was able to erect four 30-ft.-high town houses on the cement slabs present on the right of the painting.  In this process, the painter’s home, its tenants, its vehicles and its vegetation were subjected to indignities of all sorts including the loss of an enormous cedar tree, a mysterious and lengthy interuption of internet service (due to a casual snip of a wire), and (at steep expense to tenants) towed automobiles.  Never mind the prolonged abuse of hammers, drills, saws, and other implements of auditory torture.

Guarding the site was the magnificent canine on the left of the painting, an animal so sure of himself he was never known to bark.  Objections were to be stared down with unspoken menace.

Nevertheless, the painter took heart from the apparent attempt to preserve a blossoming cherry tree growing next to the porta-potty.  She took note, on her neighborhood strolls, of a number of graffiti which seemed appropriate as decoration for the plywood barrier established around the tree, as well as (on a similar facility just down the street) the scrawled comment on Jeff Bezo’s enterprise on the side of the porta-potty.

Alas, the cherry tree did not survive.  Sage construction had its own idea of appropriate vegetation.

By the time the cement driveway between the two front houses was poured, neighborhood feeling was irrepressible:  and no, it was not the painter who inscribed “F**k you, techie scum” in the wet cement.