Anybody Handy At Putting A Trellis Up?

Our idiot neighbours behind us have just done the one thing that Vicki always said they might do (and which I had argued that they couldn't possibly be stupid enough to do): they've spent the last several days cutting down all of the foliage that had grown up between their yard and ours (which, unfortunately, was all on their side of the fence).

Those plants were serving two purposes, as far as I was concerned: some small amount of noise blockage, and more importantly: providing some privacy between our two houses. We'd planted 7 cedar hedges along that property line back in 2005, but the tree guys who actually dug the holes for them started in the wrong place (Vicki and I were both at work that day) and so they didn't cover the entire area between our yard and the socially retarded ones. But there was lots of growth there, on their side, and so I didn't worry too much.

As of today, though, it's pretty much just air between us. We now look directly into their trailer park-like yard, and they look into ours. Considering the amount of work Vicki's put into the gardens around our yard, the idiots definitely got the better part of that bargain! It's absolutely awful. So now the plan is to see if we can get 30 feet of 8 foot high trellis erected along our 3 foot high chain link fence there, so that we can go back to not being able to see every bit of foolishness that they're up to (tonight, for example, they've got a big fire going in their back yard, to burn up all of the stuff they cut down). This one family has undoubtedly cost us more, in terms of money spent to try to reduce their noise as well as just general frustration when we're out in our yard, than the rest of the neighbourhood combined. They are truly the living embodiment of the old expression, there goes the neighbourhood.

[Update Jun 22/09: I found out today why all of the plant life was pulled down. They'd had a lot of water in their basement this Spring and determined that that area of their yard needs regrading so that the water can be taken away from the house. Fair enough. I'm glad to hear there was a good reason for it! In talking to the wife/mother of the family, she also offered to give us a few of their mature cedars that they're planning to get rid of anyway, for us to put in that area of the yard on our side of the fence. If we can make that happen, then this little adventure may have a happy ending, after all. And we all like those!]