The lies that neighbors tell their landscapers. [View all]

[Baitball Blogger]

The neighbor allows the spite hedge to grow twenty feet tall before bringing in a crew to take it down to an eight foot level. I have been watching this pattern since he moved in a few years back. This is the neighbor (wife) who was trespassing on my property, which seems to have stopped with a little help from the local police. But, trespassing seems to be unavoidable in another way.

For reasons that I still cannot understand, her husband built a plant bedding along their driveway that runs parallel to the house, and then cuts to the front along the property line. In other words, they cannot drag heavy plant trimmings from the back to the front of the house without...wait for it...without trespassing across my property. Not unless you walk over that strange flower bed on their property.

So, the dilemma is that any time that hedge gets cut down, the workers have to cut well into my property to get around a power box near the road. This had to be known at the time that planter was built.

Since I had a no-confrontation-is-the-best-policy rule for this neighbor, I stayed away from their landscapers. But this time, I went to speak to them, and this is what I was told. They said, "Did you know that they're paying to trim your hedge?"

My hedge? I asked. It's not my hedge. (Maybe he was insinuating that when someone puts a spite hedge up, it suddenly obligates you to maintain your side of the bushes.) I told them that I understand there will be heavy branches that need to be moved up to the front, and in those cases, you may cut across my property, but please use their property for everything else.

That's when they told me that the neighbor had talked to me about this job.

What? I swear I never get accustomed to it when someone reveals that someone else has lied. I told the poor landscaper that the neighbor and I haven't spoken to each other in years and that the hedge should never have been planted.

Just for backfill: it was the previous owner who planted the bush, though I suspect that the new neighbors were not completely unknown to them, or at least, they had mutual friends, which facilitated the sale. It's just conjecture. But it would certainly explain why no one came by to stake the property line. I see that a lot around here. Sales are made without anyone bothering to determine their legal property boundaries, and I suspect it has something to do with a certain element in this neighborhood that thinks that encroaching on the golf course property is part of the perks of living along a fairway. I mean, why set up an orange flag when some neighbors have managed to encroach twenty feet into the golfcourse with their own, planted and maintained hedges?

I swear, it's these overreaches that are so common in this neighborhood that creates a need to draw a line and forewarn outsiders that we're not all of like minds around here.