By 1980 they built route 93 bypassing the downtown and built the mall, all the department stores were gone in a few years. By '87 or so they built a huge Arizona style subdivision in the field behind my house, then circa '00 an even larger subdivision across Wellington Rd.

When they built the new subdivisions they used bulldozers to remove the topsoil and they sold it. They rolled in fresh new green sod that looked great when they were selling the houses but in six months the lawns were terribly brown and could only be revived by heavy application of chemicals and water.

Half of our neighbors wondered what we did to get our lawn looking so good, the other half were mad at us for harboring dandilions. The '00 subdivision charged new homeowners for a "landscaper's special" which was a few yew trees, they failed to remove the trees from the burlap bags so they were all dead in two years.

A little ignorance goes a long a way.