They also painted our sidewalk. The markings lasted about a year.
Try sandpapering rocks & sidwalks that are painted.
Coarser-grained paper, natch.
Look in your loan documents. You probably have a Improvement Location Certificate, or ILC.
This should show you where your house is on the lot as well as any easements and improvements.
First thing I would do on Monday is call the locate service mentioned earlier. Find out if a locate was done on your property, why, and complain about them painting your landscaping rocks. Don’t complain about the grass.
This could be something as simple as an address mix up.
Wire brush and a little paint thinner might be the way to go.
Paint thinner near your grass/flowering shrubs/garden?
No way!
Use rubbing alcohol.
Steel wool might work, too.
For the record, easements don’t magically appear when the Wizard of Hydro waves his magic wand, or something. They’re legal titles to the use of property not amounting to fee simple. If I own an access easement on your property, I have a legally deeded right to cross your land at a specific defined location on your property for the purpose of accessing my own.
If you granted an easement, you should have a record of doing so. But easements run with the land, and if a previous owner granted an easement, it should be included as an exception on your title deed and/or listed in your abstract of title.
However, odd stuff happens. I recall reading about a parcel of land in a small town near my home town, vacant and where the new owner wished to build on it. The town owned a sewer line and two water lines which crossed it. But:
[ul][li]There was a ten-foot-wide easement for the sewer line. However, the contractor had put in the sewer line on a route that at one end was on the precise edge of the easement and on the other was about sixteen feet outside the easement.[/li][li] The water line which ran diagonally across the property had no deeded easement whatsoever. The terms “constructive easement,” “encroachment,” and “lawsuit for damages” got thrown around a lot before somebody finally negotiated a compromise.[/li][li]The water line which ran along the edge of the property had an absurd easement that varied from ten to thirty feet in width.[/ul][/li]
All this said, the normal terms of an easement authorize a given public utility (either a government service or a corporate entity) to (1) run their lines (of whatever sort) across your property, in the interest of providing you and their neighbors with the service they provide, and (2) enter on your property to fix their lines (a) in an emergency or (b) with notice to you.
Legally, you are not supposed to construct anything or put in large woody plants on an easement, even if it’s “on your property” – it’s an encumbrance upon your right to use your property as you see fit, granted by you or your predecessor in the public interest. You and your neighbors need to dispose of household liquid waste, so you agree to a sewer line on your land. The town needs to access that sewer line when there’s a break or blockage, so you agree not to build atop it or adjacent to it. They have a ten-foot corridor running across your land beneath which their sewer line runs, and on the surface of which you may plant tulips or pansies but not lilacs or yew trees, and on which you may erect a screen tent but not a garage.
I won’t be able to find out anything until Monday. We built this house, so we are the original owners of the land. We also have a septic tank, so unless they’re gonig to run a sewer line I don’t know what’s going on.
Maybe you’ll get lucky and find out that it’s something you want. A few weeks ago, our neighborhood got painted up. A few days later, crews were everywhere installing fiber. In the near future, we’re going to be able to upgrade our bandwidth to 30Mbps down / 5Mbps up 
I called the Call Before You Dig folks. They told me the name of the outfit that had requested the flag marking.
I called the Outfit. They are a subcontractor for Sprint and Comcast. I was annoyed on the phone, asking why the flags were in the middle of my yard and why we weren’t notified. I guess I overwhelmed the supervisor, because she said she’d call me back. I had her call Ivylad, since I’m at work.
They did call Ivylad within about 30 minutes. It seems Comcast is having cable problems, so they will be digging up and replacing the cable. We were assured that all sod and turf will be replaced.
We will be taking “before” pictures of our yard.
See, no big deal.
No big deal because Ivylass called to find out what the hell was going on… But if she hadn’t’ve? Would the companies involved with the digging come and told her what was going on, or would the Ivyfamily just’ve found out when all their lawn was torn to hell?
Hi! I’m that guy! (well, sorta).
We once called to get some lines marked out, and the One-Call people came, and dutifully marked the pressurized gas line underground. We were trenching for an overhead-to-underground power feeder, and were careful to avoid the gas line. Needless to say, I didn’t have the best dirt boys around, and they found the line. . . a full five feet off from where it had been marked. Granted, requirements are within 18" of either side of the marked line (local lane widths may vary), but five friggin’ feet? Oy vey.
That, my friends, was a very interesting day: SNAP! hisssssssssssssssssss . . . “Say Bill, did you just fart?” “Um, no Sam. Did you?” :eek:
Tripler
There is a reason I’ve come to use pressure washers for “making mud”. 
It would seem to be in the best interest of the utility to put out flyers or door hangers - “we’re going to be digging in your area during the month of June” - but technically, if they have an easement I don’t think that they are required to notify. And, if they are “replacing” a cable which is already installed in Ivylass’ yard, they’ve got an easement. Either that, or it’s installed in the street right-of-way. It would have been a Good Thing, as far as their public relations, if they had notified their customers.
Tripler: couldn’t ya just “pinch” it off ? 
Someone trespassed onto my property and stuck flags into my yard without my permission. Apparently, strangers are going to be digging up my front yard and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am irked that I was given no notice of what they were doing.
I am still not happy that my yard is going to be dug up. We also have a septic tank, and while Ivylad does not think they are going to go that close to our house, I still have concerns of the potential damage to my yard, shrubs, and how good their “repair and replacement” will be.
Did you ever check to see if they had an easement? If they do, they weren’t trespassing.
As mentioned above. this is not along my property line. There are flags running about 18-20 feet up my yard.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have an easement. I’m assuming this means you didn’t check.
Since when do they have an easement in the middle of my yard?
It may have been written there when the property was first developed, or later on when those utilities came into the neighborhood. It happens quite often actually. Do you have access to your deed or any paperwork about your lot?
Or, you could even call the muncipal engineer to find out what’s underground there, and who authorized the dig.
Tripler
Someone has to know. You don’t just go digging around all willy-nilly, without costing some serious cash to someone.