My next door neighbors on both sides aren’t bad people. They’re fairly nice families, one with grandchildren (the grandparents are in their 50s, so not very old), and the other are younger, maybe early 30s, with one young child.
The problem is both mow parts of my yard–the older folks run about 3 feet into my yard, and the guy on the other side mows the strip of my yard in between our houses.
I mow my yard as often as they do, and I keep my yard clean and well-maintained (all three of us do), and it’s not like anyone’s complained about anyone else. It’s just that they’re overstepping their boundaries. The real problem is this is fairly innocuous, and not worth being a dick over, but at the same time, it’s irritating. So how can I politely suggest to them that I take care of my own yard, and they need to stay on their side of the property line?
Just tell them it looks silly when those strips are done and the rest isnt. They will probably be relieved to have to do that much less mowing. They probably think they are doing you a favor.
I can see that, but they mow their grass much shorter than I do. I keep mine at about 3", while they cut it at nearly putting green length. So that can complicate matters, at least to me. ETA I was responding to aceplace57.
I know that I’ve used a street light post as one of my boundaries ever since moving here 20 years ago. My neighbors have changed, but I’ve kept the same mowing routine.
I’d be very reluctant to say anything. Once you create a grumpy neighbor its difficult to ever repair the damage.
Yeah, this is a “choose your battles” kind of situation. Think carefully on it, because it could be interpreted in the first shot of a years long battle.
OTOH, while the risk is far fetched, there is something to be said for not letting them encroach on your property. IIRC, a friend of mine had some trouble when a similar neighbor wanted to put in a garage which edged over onto her property. Because he’d been trimming the tree branches and raking there (from his trees planted a few feet over, on his side, due to be removed for the proposed garage), a court decided that she’d ceded the property to him years ago, completely unwittingly. She thought he was just taking care of his trees, he took advantage of that to build his garage. I don’t recall the legal details, but it boiled down to he was using/maintaining the land without complaint from her, so it became his.
Any chance you’d like to put in a few flower beds in the spot? Passive-aggressive may be the way to go.
3 inches is healthy and can tolerate drought much better. to keep grass extremely short then it needs to be regularly irrigated to survive. explain you don’t want that extra duty when the rest of your lawn doesn’t need it.
I’ve been in my house the longest of the three–18 years. One family has been here maybe 5 years, and the other going on 3. I think it’s exactly a “choose your battle” kind of scenario, because no matter what, I have to live here, and it’s not like they’re digging trenches or building something that crosses the property lines. They’re just mowing, not causing any real harm.
But it’s still irritating, because they’re on my property, and it seems to me like either ignorance of the line or disrespect. But aceplace57 is right about the grumpy neighbor, and I don’t want that. We have a nodding acquaintance with each other, which is fine, but I don’t want hostility or bad feelings.
Whynot, the particular areas don’t lend themselves to flower beds–it’s the part of the yard running from the house to the street. I’ll just let it go unless they do something serious like digging on my side of the line or something, and take my chances on the garage example. It’s just not worth stressing about. I appreciate the input everyone.
I like the mark your territory approach like WhyNot was suggesting. Cover that patch of lawn with garden gnomes. Make sure you choose a theme. Suggestion: biker gnomes.
My neighbor used to come into my back patio and sweep her magnolia leaves into a leaf bag (magnolia leaves are a bitch to sweep because of the way they curl up and hug the ground). The first time I saw this I was pleased to no end. The initial knee-jerk reaction of “hey what are you doing in my territory?!” was quickly overcome by a feeling of gratitude and wanting to do something nice in return. So maybe your neighbor is just earning some cosmic karma points.
I realize that leaf sweeping isn’t exactly the same as grass cutting. If there is really a need to keep your grass at a length other than how he’s cutting it for you, I would suggest planting a small, decorative garden fence of the type that folks sometimes put around flower beds.
You could prepare him for the installation by telling him that you’re going to be watching a friend’s dog for a few months and want to discourage it from wandering out of your yard. A little white lie; hopefully not the first of a web…
If your neighbors are anything like my husband, they might just love to mow – especially if they’re using riding mowers. What is it about guys and motorized things? My husband would mow our neighbor’s lawn all the time if he could, but the neighbor is also a guy who loves his riding mower.
On the other hand, they could be confused about the property lines. If you did the first mowing of the season, they should have been able to tell by looking at where you stopped mowing.
How about putting out some of those little flags – the ones that denote “recently sprayed”? And leave them there.
If you think they’re genuinely being nice but clueless, a friendly word or two should solve the problem (the idea about your yard looking uneven if only parts of it are mowed may be helpful).
Problems arise when people do this not to be friendly, but to assert domain over a strip of your property (legalistically speaking I don’t know how successful this might be).
When I moved into a house we were renting years ago in South Dakota, about the first thing the neighbor (who owned his place) told me was that he held title to a strip of ground on the other side of the chain-link fence in the back (which was contiguous with the rest of our yard) and that he’d be coming over the fence to maintain it. I told him to take it up with our landlord. He and his wife did similar dickish things, including raking our yard for fear the few leaves on it might blow over on his turf - then his wife started picking up tiny bits of trash on our lawn right under our bedroom window. This finally stopped after Mrs. J. called her out and laid down the law.
When they and their moving van finally pulled out, we sat on our porch and applauded.
One day our neighbor snow plowed the yard between or garages (about 12’ wide, 20 ’ long, and we knew we owned it). Weird, he never did it the previous 5 years we lived here. I asked him nicely not to do that, since we have gardens there and that’s where the dog goes poop and might get run over. He told me to prove that we owned it. He said “Prove it” about 5 times while I was trying to reason with him.
Well, after getting a survey and permit, we put up a 6 foot tall stockade fence, which is 18" from his garage, right on the property line. He kind of asked for that… But our new privacy is nice now, as a benefit.
Just make sure if you do anything to get a survey and a permit first! That will end any and all questions and arguments.
They may think it’s their property for some reason.
When we bought this place, the agent told us that the strip of ground that was full of rose bushes was on our property. So we watered them. Then, one day in the fall, we decided to cut them back for the winter. A couple hours later, bloody-armed, we were done and sweating our butts off. Just then the neighbor pulled in: “Oh, thank you so much for cutting those back. I was going to do it this weekend.” Ah, shit. Luckily, we didn’t kill any of them, or worse, dig some of them up and move them. At least we don’t have to do any more pruning on them.
