Beyond that, though, persona may in fact be the trouble maker. He, after all, is the one that calls his neighbor to set the wall between them again. He also admits that it may be some mischievous to be picky about the whole thing. Finally, he pretty much calls his quiet neighbor a caveman- “an old stone savage armed”. Just not a real good attitude in general…
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
I’m willing to bet that both parties probably have no idea where the property lines are. I just bought a house and have only a vague idea of where my lawn starts and the neighbor’s starts.
This is so not worth mentioning. If they were killing your flower garden that’d be one thing, but it’s just grass.
If you are unsure about your property line, Go out to the curb or gutter and look for what appears to be a nickel-sized slug nailed into the concrete. This is a surveyor’s monument, and is generally (but not always!) set at the property line.
Close examination of the monument will reveal a number, which is the licensed surveyor’s I.D. Inquire at your local building department using this number and the clerk should be able to dig up the survey, or at least point you to the surveyor, who will provide (for a small fee) a copy of the survey.
Not all properties will have this monument. You are most likely to have success if your property or one nearby has had a major remodel done in the last twenty or so years.
If your neighbor sees you out there, looking and making notes, and asks what you are doing, just say your attorney suggested getting the information, but be vague as what you intend to do with it.
I like the rebar suggestion. Rocks can get airborne when they encounter a mower blade. I suppose if one wanted to be polite, you could put inline with the rebar some of those little flags utility companies put up to designate where water, sewage, gas, and electrical lines are in your back yard before you do any digging.
M-18 Claymores would work well too, but you really can’t leave them for long with trip wires or pressure switches. They’re best as command detonated. Though, come to think of it, nowadays you could probably make do with a IR LED sensor. If only Bouncing Bettys were available on the civilian market…
I would ask what is so important about those few feet of lawn. Is he doing important things on that land? Does having it mowed prevent him form enjoying it? People get so worked up about things they forget what’s important. The lawn is getting mowed. Is that really a big deal worth possibly wrecking your relationship with your neighbour?
Any reason why you can’t just man up (or woman up, as the case may be) and have a nice, friendly chat with your neighbor explaining that while you realize they’re just being nice, and you do appreciate the thought, you’d really prefer if they stuck closer to the lot lines, and just reiterate that you realize they meant no harm, and that you have no ill will, just that you have a thing about your lawn and they’re completely inadvertently causing you strife?
I’m surprised at how many people are advising the OP to get a survey, delineate the property line with flags and such, or tell the neighbor to stop. I suppose the actual layout of the property might influence whether the encroachment is unwarranted or whether it is just a common sense solution.
Take my property lines, for instance. On one side, I know where the property line is, but my neighbor (their lawn service, actually) on that side mows a couple feet into my yard. It’s because the layout of the landscaping, including a wooden retaining wall near but not on part of the property line, means it makes more sense visually for them to do so. If they stopped right at the property line, it would look like they left a strip of their property unmowed. And when I mow, it would look like I was encroaching on their yard.
In the back, I have about a half acre of property that goes up a hill and then flattens out. There are neighbors back there on another street. My property line there is not regular with 90 degree angles. It’s in fact more of a trapezoid shape. When the neighbor immediately behind my house mows his back yard, he ends up mowing part of my trapezoid because he is cutting a roughly rectangular section that would sensibly make up his back yard. Because his property (and that portion of my property) is at the top of the hill where it is flat, he mows it like a nicely maintained yard. Most of my part of that property is on a steep, rugged incline and so I leave it uncut and “wild” like most of the property back there. If I were an ass and told him to stop right at the property line, he’d have a weirdly asymmetrical back yard with a portion that is not mowed at all. Why would I want to do that to my neighbor?
Maybe it’s different in the city, with grid-like property lines.
Right now things are friendly but what if that nice neighbor moves on and a not-so-nice neighbor moves in. Then things can get sticky.
We actually do mow a swath of the neighbor to the right’s yard but it’s for our own protection: she only mows maybe twice a year so between fleas, critters and mosquitoes we want a bit of a buffer. If her mom ever sells that place we’ll stop mowing it… as long as the new neighbors do mow it.
Yeah, if he’s using and maintaining a swath of your grass (even just to visually complete the look of his own yard), and you’re not, why not sell it to him? Make the official recorded property lines conform to your and his actual usage, if you don’t want to do it the other way.
ETA: This was for Dingbang, but maybe it’s an answer for the OP as well: offer to sell your neighbors the land they want to tend.
