I spent part of mine removing standing water from the shrub bed at the front of our house. Despite repeated requests to our management company, FirstService Residential, nothing has been done to solve this problem. It's clearly our Association's responsibility, but that doesn't seem to make any difference. So Saturday morning, after a week of heavy rain, I got out the wet vac to get the water out of the bed and give it a chance to dry out a little over the nice sunny weekend that was forecast. With more showers coming in the week ahead, it was a temporary solution at best, but I hope it's enough to help the shrubs survive for now. There's a big rhododendron at the corner of the house that is struggling and probably has root rot caused by the bad drainage. The rhododendron that was next to it had to be removed. Both were already large, mature plants when we bought the house 18 years ago. It's a shame to see beautiful, long-established landscaping ruined by poor maintenance. As I noted in my previous post, one of our property managers, Anna DeSimone, finally came and looked at the problem in mid-April (although I raised it with FirstService months before that). She brought a representative of our Association's landscape contractor, BrightView. Since then nothing has been done and it seems nothing will be done. So much for carefree condo living.
