About Me

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
I live in the Brighton Heights Neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh PA and recently certified my yard as a wildlife habitat. please feel free to check out my Blog and I hope you enjoy it.When I first bought my property the house was in disrepair and the yard was nothing but dead grass over grown weeds and garbage. It is now a habitat that provides wildlife with the four basic requirements needed to thrive. These are food, clean water, cover from predators, and places to raise young. I have provided these in my small space and will continue to improve on these elements of my garden. I am also an artist and I get a lot of inspiration from my garden. I am fascinated with tiny houses and enjoy cooking and music. I have two adopted cats from a rescue, and I have a one eyed cat that was a stray and needed surgery so I took her in. They are all house cats so they do not tear up my wildlife habitat. They do enjoy sitting in the windows looking at the other animals that visit my yard.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Wildlife Habitat Recovery

As I posted earlier my wildlife habitat has been vandalized. I was told not to clean anything up until the police took crime scene photos. By the time that happened all the water lilies that were pulled from the pond were completely dried up and looked dead. My cat tails and pickerel weed were the same way. I re potted everything and will wait to see if anything comes back. I have been so upset and depressed about this and have not been spending any time out in the yard or at the pond. I still keep finding dead fish on my back steps. I put up security cameras and signs to try to stop these punks from entering my yard again. I have also put alarms on all of my doors and windows so if they try to come back into the house I will know it.

Friday, July 20, 2018

The Vandalism continues.

I have not been able to sleep the last few nights because my yard was vandalized again. This time it went on for two days it started out  Monday night. I did not know anything happened till the next day and when I went out in the morning I found 3 dead fish that were torn in half. At first I thought maybe a cat or something got into the pond. As I looked around some more I noticed that my plants had been pulled up and a lot of stuff was broken or thrown around. I also have a fish bowl with blue glass beads in it and the beads were scattered around the yard and down the street from my house. I cleaned up the yard and went back into the house to post on my neighborhoods web site so others would know to watch out for their property. Afterwards I went back outside to add water to my pond and when I got out in the yard It had been torn up again and more fish had been killed. This time I found they were cutting the fish in half with a razor blade. . I called the police and after they left I cleaned the yard up again. I went back inside and checked the neighborhood website again. My post had received a lot of responses and one person told me they saw two kids the night before at 8:00. He said they were 2 black males around 16 to 18 leaving my front yard. These two have been terrorizing my place for over a year now and their actions have become more escalated and violent. They were not even running or afraid of what they had done they walked out like they lived here and like there was nothing wrong. After lunch I went out and again they tore the place up. I called the police again and after the police left I was so upset I just left the yard the way it was. 
At around 2:30 I had a head ache and went inside to try and lay down. I never fell asleep but just layed on my couch in my living room with the air conditioner on. I heard something around 4:00 and thought I would be real quiet and sneak out to the back yard and catch them tearing the place up again. As soon as I walked around the corner from my living room to the dinning room I saw them in my china cabinet drawers going through stuff. I yelled at them and they took off out the back door. The door had been forced open and the screen door screen that was also locked was ripped apart. I closed the door locked it and called the police for the third time. This time they took things a little more serious. They had two cars show up and one was a K9 unit. They wanted to do a sweep of the house to make sure no one was still in the house But I told them I had cats. They said they would keep the dog on a leash so I said ok. They did not find anyone else in the house so they took a statement wrote up a report and had me look to see if anything was missing. My medication from the VA hospital had been stolen and my Case that I keep my wallet and cell phone was missing. After the police left  I called to have my credit card and ATM card canceled. 
I posted this again on the neighborhood website and after that I went out side to look around and see all the latest damage. I went to look at my next door neighbors gate because they broke that to get into the yard. I moved some of the trash they threw in between her house garage and found the case that contained my wallet and cell phone. Nothing was missing out of it and I figured they must have dropped it when they ran through there to get away. I went back inside and began to look around to see what they had done. Everything was a mess and just thrown all over. 
The next day some friends of mine who heard what happened came over to help me install some security cameras I bought. They also bought some signs that said no trespassing and signs that said security cameras are in use. They brought with them some motion sensor lights and also put those up. I asked how much I owed them and they said they were a gift. After they left I checked the neighborhood web site to find out everyone was trying to set up a go fund me account and they were trying to get volunteers and donations to help fix the place up again. I told them it was not necessary because I already had bought cameras and that friends had already put them up for me. As far as replacing the fish and plants and fixing the yard up and restoring the wildlife habitat I decided not to restore or replace anything. If they are just going to keep coming back then why bother. I do not want them to keep killing the fish and plants.
After I have had a chance to calm down and sort things out I will decide if I should get rid of the wildlife habitat and pond or if I might restore it. either way I am not in the right frame of mind to decide now. All my waterlilies were torn out and thrown everywhere my cat tails were torn out of the pond and out of the container they were planted in along with most of the plants in my pond. My lotus were torn out and I could not even find any of the tubers from them.
Tonight since I can not sleep again I put alarms on all the first floor windows and doors. I have had my fathers old hunting knife at my side the entire time since the last visit from the police. I have gone on line to find out what I need to do to get a gun permit so I can get a gun. I also want to get a carry and conceal permit. I want to know if I go over to the church yard to work or am in my yard I can protect myself.
  
 The neighbors gate that was kicked in and broken
My Kitchen door and screen door where they broke into my house. 
 Lower pond area.
 All my water lilies. I was told not to clean up my yard till the police crime unit comes to take pictures and the waterlilies are dying and attracting flies
 Waterlilies
Empty container that one of my Pickerel weeds were planted in 
 What is left of the water lilies in the upper pond.
 Buckets and plant containers thrown all over and plants trampled.
 Broken solar lights are thrown everywhere


 Dead plants
 Plants and everything scattered
 More dead plants
 Dead plants
One of the dead fish they are really attracting flies and getting dragged away by animals 
Lower Pond I think they may have punctured this because its not holding water. 
 New signs and light
Camera 
Signs and light 
 Cameras
 The torn out plants thrown on top of the bog area.
 Dead plants
 Plants and planters
Torn Up Plants 
 Potted plants moved all over
 A Mess
More cameras and lights.

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Vandalism in My Wildlife Habitat Area Again

I got up this morning and went straight out to see my lotus again. It started opening yesterday and I was all set to see it open even more today. As soon as I walked out the back door my day was ruined. The little bastards that have been breaking into my yard and destroying things struck again. They picked my lotus and threw it on the ground along with a bunch of lotus leaves and waterlily leaves. they pulled all of my solar lights out of the ground and threw them in the pond and out on the front sidewalk. They also threw a bunch of the large rocks into the pond and one fell on the American Lotus that I started from seed. it broke of leaves but I think the growing tip is still alright. If they break the growing tip the whole lotus dies. They already killed of several other lotus earlier this year and they killed a bunch of my fish. They trampled some of my native orchids and jack in the pulpit. Today I ordered a security camera system and hope to catch them in the act. I have reported these occurrences to the police and report every time they come back so they can keep a record of when and the damages. These kids think they are getting away with this but it just takes time. They come past my house while I am outside and yell to me that they killed more fish or that they destroyed certain things. The Neighbors have watched them and have also reported this to the police. If I find out who they are then I will press charges and hold their parents liable for all the damages.