OUR HOUSE, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLANTS

It was a home with a lot of firsts.

It was the first time living in Surrey for Heidi and I. It was our
first house together. Our first (and only) baby took her first steps
there. We put heart and soul into that cream and brown B.C. box,
renovating almost every room.

I retiled the fireplace. We had the wood floors refinished. We
painted. We decorated. We fixed, and we fussed. We created nine years
of wonderful, rich memories.

And last spring, with no small degree of sadness, we sold that first
house, and moved south.

Last Sunday morning, I stood on my former neighbour's driveway, and
the two of us watched as Mounties in coveralls threw fans,
dehumidifiers, power transformers, and bulging green garbage bags into
the back of a big panel truck.

Our first home had become a marijuana grow-op.

Upstairs and down.

Snaking through the rooms was silver ducting, all vented up the
chimney. Hanging from the ceilings was a spider's web of wiring, where
the grow lights and hoods had hung.

The dirty floors were littered with pots, now holding only bare stubs
of stalks.

Chunks of wall had been torn out to get at the main electric service,
which had been bypassed.

The caretakers were living in one bedroom and the living room, which
contained a couch and a stand-alone hammock.

The air was hot and heavy with humidity, reeking with the skunky odour
of marijuana.

The officers counted 450 plants.

At $1,500 per pound per plant, in three-month crop rotations, the
police figured that the little house which we sold for $210,900 had
generated somewhere between $2 million and $4 million.

Since moving into our current home, we've often wondered about the
Vietnamese family that bought our first house.

What kind of people were they? Did they appreciate the place? Were
they taking care of it?

We now know the answers to those questions.

Turns out we didn't sell a home as much as we sold a greenhouse. The
people it sheltered were there to put on a facade, and tend the pot
crop.

Now our former home stands ruined and empty.

If it hadn't been for the noisy, attempted rip-off by a couple of guys
at 3:30 a.m. on a weekend morning, and the neighbour who called the
police, the house would still be churning out dope, creating obscene
profits for some gang lords somewhere.

As for the busted occupants, they'll probably be put back in business
in no time.

The RCMP are overwhelmed, overworked and understaffed.

They're outnumbered and out-financed. Meanwhile, the courts are just
plain out to lunch. And the pot growers know it. Grow ops - B.C's
newest, hottest industry.

Coming soon to your neighbourhood, if it isn't there
already.