Annoying neighbors?

[I Love Brian, Forever <3]

For a while now, the lawn mower has been broken. The guy across the street was supposed to fix it and he kept putting it off and putting it off.

So I heard from the guy across the street that MY neighbors went over there complaining that our grass is too long and that he was going to send an inspector out here. (Also, the guy across the street was supposed to cut our grass, as he does several houses on the block.) Well, the guy across the street never got to cutting the grass or fixing the mower.

Sure enough, we got a notice in the mail that from a routine inspection, they found out that our grass is above 8 inches, which is the maximum height.

So the wife next door came out to my mother and I, when we were getting groceries out of the car and asked if we were ever going to cut our grass, because she has a garden in the back and was worried about dandelions getting in her garden.

She offered to let us use her mower, but then never took it out of her garage.

She should know this: Payback's a b.....!


Anyone else have some neighbors that they could do without?

[boscibo]

Well, I was going to come in here and tell you about my new neighbor - he hasn't cut his grass yet this year!

It's not a big deal, we have a privacy fence and can't see it anyway. He rents, so I figure he doesn't have a lawnmower yet. It does look a little trashy, but the fence blocks our view.

My BF was going to give him our old lawnmower (which is almost brand new, we've only had it a few years but Jeff doesn't like it because it's too heavy - we got a new one a few weeks ago), but we never see the guy outside of his house. He has a dog, but works weird hours and must only walk her late at night or in the mornings when we're still asleep.

Other than that, we are lucky enough not to have any neighbors. There are houses way down the hill across the street, but they're too far away to be a problem. There is a house up the hill, but we have a patch of woods between us. one of the neighbors the next block up lets their dog come down to the park across the street everyday - loose and alone - and that bugs me. My dogs go crazy and bark a lot, but that's not such a big deal either.

[Cheshirekatt]

We have the opposite problem.....we live next to the lawn nazis. I mean, there is not a blade of grass out of place. I do what I can but they're retired and I work 50 hours a week so they're just going to havet o live with it. We do keep the grass in the back yard pretty long, but we've got a 6 ft wooden fence all around. We keep it longer so that the dogs don't tear it up so bad and make it all muddy.

[carole]

I found this thread somewhat interesting, do you have laws which say you must cut your grass, its no-ones business here if your lawns get a little long, maybe if it were really high, people would complain, but does not sound like yours was too bad, geez talk about interfering and nosey, people would laugh if you tried that one on here.

[boscibo]

Many towns and municipalities have laws regarding length of grass - how well they are enforced is a different story. Most of the time there is no problem until a neighbor complains. There can be problems if the grass gets really weedy, people with allergies can't deal with that. Also some folks think it brings their property values down. Some places are really picky - like you can't park pick-ups in your own driveway, you can't build fences, all the houses have to look basically the same - I have one of those subdivisions like that by me, and these people are paying $350,000 for the houses and then have to put up with those rules!

On occasion, we have let our grass get really long. Especially in the dogs' part of the lawn, that is why I can't really complain about our neighbor.

Even with the grass, I like him lots better than the old renter - her kids were brats, she had dogs that later 'disappeared' (one day the dog was there, and the next day she just said she had to get rid of it - with two different dogs!), she always had bonfires way too close to our house, one summer she went without electricity for the whole summer because she didn't pay her bill...the list goes on. I'll take long grass anyday over that.

[I Love Brian, Forever <3]

boscibo- I live on a block like that. Total conformity. It's not a subdivision, just a block. All of the houses are basically the same design and they're old, built out of brick, on a cement slab. Pretty old house. Once, by the very honest guy across the street, have we been called the "slum of the neighborhood." Why? Because we have a tree out in the front yard that has 6 million of those little [gum] balls. Well, they all just happened to fall when neither my mom or I could pick them up. I had a really bad head cold and felt like total crap for a week and she was, so it seemed, almost constantly at work. So I went over to this guy's house one day when my mom was at work and was going to ask him to use his leaf blower to get these things in a pile, then I would take care of the rest. So I had to sit and listen to this a$$ for about an hour, how we're the slum of the neighborhood and this is how nice neighborhoods go down---people like my mom and I. I tried to get my side of the story in but, with this alcoholic, I couldn't. I've found out if you let him think whatever the hell he wants to think, you have to listen to less b.s. that way. I tried leaving, but he kept on talking and talking. --- Slum this, slum that. Eventually, I just told this psycho to quit looking over there if it bothers him so much. About a week later, he got out there and blew the balls into a pile. For some reason, he dislikes my mother and I, which I am totally cool with. He'll cut his grass 6 times before he ever considers doing something in our yard --- that he'd be PAID for.

The neighbor to the right of me is going to have many dandelions growing in her little sad excuse for a garden.

The neighbor to the left of me, the husband, ancient as dirt, shoots squirrels. He has, like, a million bird feeders out there hanging in the trees. In the summer time, if a squirrel does so much as enter his yard, he'll shoot it. If it's eating out of the bird feeder, he'll shoot it. Last summer, I found a number of dead squirrels in my yard. I was made to keep quiet, we were 'new' in the neighborhood and they didn't want to cause "trouble." Well, this summer, we're not friggin' new. Let this old crap see what happens if I find a dead squirrel in my yard this year.

I also do stupid little stuff to annoy this... old ... person. Like this house came with stuff from the previous owner, who had to be moved to a nursing home. In the garage, I found a little squirrel glass figurine type thing. My window is on the side of the house where the gate is to the old man's house. He has to walk this way to put out the garbage and so on. So, I put the squirrel figurine in my window, along with pictures I have printed out on the computer. Also, when he's outside in the backyard, waiting for a helpless squirrel to kill, if I see one that he is focused on, I'll make a really high-pitched sound and scare the squirrel away. Either that, or I'll throw something in the squirrel's area to scare him away. Sometimes he tries to wave to me, but, I have no patience for a.h.'s like this one.

Ooh!!! And the neigbor to the right, the one that loves her garden... she lets her cats, four of them, be outside as they please. They always have to go in her house at night and when they want them inside, but they go outside a lot. I don't mind the cats being in the yard. But, I DO mind them on my car, in the flower bed, digging up the flowers (treating it like a litter box) and leaving their dead, headless birds in the yard. I was talking to the wife next door and she informed me that last year she lost a cat to a car. It was a partial outside cat and had gotten run over. So I'm thinking to myself, 'why the hell are you letting *these* cats outside, ya dumba..' Some people just don't learn and definitely shouldn't own any animals. She also lets the cats go in our backyard, which definitely isn't a good thing with Zoe. Zoe has come extremely close to catching squirrels, rabbits and birds. I don't let her catch them, but once she's chasing them, it's total tunnel vision. She doesn't hear me calling her name. I don't want any crap from the neighbor if one of her cats gets hurt by Zoe.
I don't hate her cats, but she needs to have some friggin'
consideration for others.

carole, where do you live? You're LUCKY!!!

boscibo--- lucky you! NO NEIGHBORS. Oh, it must be great.

Chesirekatt, do your neighbors give you any crap about your yard?

Sorry this is SOOOO long, guys!!!

[anna_66]

Oh my, what neighbors

I'm glad our neighbors aren't like that. Most of them (with the exception of the ones with the GSD Max) have lived here longer than we have & never bother us one bit. I love it!

Oh, & I could just see someone getting down on your lawn & measuring the size of the grass....what a sight

[lovemyshiba]

I used to have a neighbor who was ridiculous about his grass--apparently he had nothing better to do--he was a bit strange.
Anyway, our neighbors here aren't bad, with the exception of the kids who run through the yard and stop and ring the doorbell sometimes (when did it become ok to do that--I would not have done that when I was a kid!!?). I don't necessarily mind the doorbell, but I have three furry ones who go crazy when they hear it

[Uabassoon]

I have a neighbor that always yells at me! It drives me nuts, I am always very respectful of him because he is elderly but sometimes I can't stand him. When I first moved in he complained because my car alarm would go off in the morning, I felt like yelling at him "If you kept your cat indoors, it wouldn't jump on my car setting off my alarm!" But I bit my tounge instead.
Then when we have parties he sits on his Cadillac and yells at my friends as they pull up into the driveway. So once I asked what the problem was, and he said that the neighbors dogs bark everytime my friends pull up and they keep him awake. I tried to tell him that I had no control over the neighbors dogs but if my friends were being too loud I would quiet them down. Instead he called the cops on me, thankfully the cops didn't do anything just told me to keep things down.
But I think we are finally on good terms. A few weeks ago Corkscrew got out so I knocked on his door to look in his backyard to see if I could find him, which I couldn't. 45 minutes later he knocked on my door with flashlights in hand ready to help me search the neighborhood.
At our last party my roommate who works at Starbucks left him a pound of coffee, a box of tea, and some candies with our number to call if things got loud. They called and thanked us for the gift and told us to have fun. And thankfully the neighbor with the barking dogs has moved, so we got no complaints.

[catland]

hmm - never heard of the phrase "you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar?"

Ordinances about grass height exist because it an unkept yard with long grass can harbor pests and become a fire hazard in the summer. I found it funny that you are mad because other people won't do your work for you.

Its your lawn. Its your responsibilty. Why are you waiting for your neighbor to deliver the mower to you? You should be the one going to her house to get it. I don't know what the story is about the guy who is supposed to mow the lawns, but whomever pays him should fire him if he isn't doing his job.

While you are at it, bake a batch of cookies and share them. Do something nice for these neighbors and they might start to warm up to you. Greet them with a smile, not a scowl.

I have nice neighbors. None of us have perfect lawns but all of us mow our grass and at least try to keep the weeds down. It makes for a much more pleasant place to live. We've occasionly done something wrong to upset one of them (usually something to do with fireworks ), but we appologized to them for our insensitive actions and get along fine with them now.

You reap what you sow.

[I Love Brian, Forever <3]

Uabasson- You have a lot more patience than I could ever dream of!

anna_66- LOL!

catland... I'm glad you found my thread so humorous. If you would, re-read my first entry in this thread. If you maybe took the time to see that I couldn't cut the grass, you would see why I was depending on ONE guy to, "do my work for me."

"It's your lawn. It's your responsibilty." Well, we know one thing... you have a firm grasp on the obvious.

I wasn't waiting for the neighbor to "deliver" the mower, either. She said she would put it out that night. OBVIOUSLY, she didn't.

I'd ''make some cookies'' and share it with them if I cared enough to befriend them. Once again, I OBVIOUSLY don't.

[Uabassoon]

Uabasson- You have a lot more patience than I could ever dream of!

It's not that I have a lot of patience, it's that my parents taught me at a young age to always respect my elders.

[I Love Brian, Forever <3]

I was taught, "If you don't get any [respect], then you don't give any, regardless of age."

[boscibo]

Well, I can see Catland's point. If the guy across the street isn't fixing your mower, take it somewhere else. You can make excuses why you can't do something, but ultimately the responsibility lies with you - not the guy across the street. And what is wrong with going over to the lady who offered to let you use her mower's house and asking her if you can borrow it?

Sometimes you just gotta take matters into your own hands and quit waiting for the world to beat a path to your door.

[Cheshirekatt]

None of my neighbors have ever given me a hard time about the yard. I know sometimes it's too long, but we always get to it. The dogs never go in the front yard (just the back) I never let them bark, and they're always on leash. Most of my neighbors are really cool, sometimes they make me mad but the last thing I want is to start a war with my neighbors. I mean, we have to LIVE next to these people. Yes, sometimes the dog next door barks all day, but I wouldn't complain. Sometimes Buford is a pain in the a$$ and fence fights with their dog and they never complain about that. Besides, I'd rather listen to a dog barking than screaming kids all day.

If you can't take care of your yard like your ordinances say you have to then I would suggest you hire a gardener to make sure it gets done.