Just when I thought things were calming down…
The neighbour is at it again. At least, I think it’s her. I can’t figure where else this would have come from.
I got a notice in the mail today saying that an inspector was on my property on Friday (August 27) and that I need to cut excessive overgrown grass, weeds, and shrubbery on my property. Now, y’all know my lawnmower was stolen on August 19, and I haven’t yet been able to replace it. The following week, it rained almost every day. You can cut a wet lawn with a gas mower, but not with a rotary. So I didn’t have a chance to mow my yard for almost two weeks. I went out very early last Saturday morning and mowed the front lawn as best I could with the rotary mower. It looked like a badly botched hairdo because the grass was so long, but it was trimmed. And I edged the lawn and weeded all the front flowerbeds. On Monday, my Dad said he had found his old lawnmower in the garage, and, if it would start, I could have it for the rest of this season. It did, so I re-mowed on Monday night and mowed the back yard on Tuesday night.
Now what I can’t figure out is that this has never happened before in the seven years I’ve lived here. And the mean lady and her husband used to leave their hedges scraggling all over creation — including into my driveway. But no one ever made them come cut it. (And I would know, because up until just recently, the neighbour has been pretty friendly and would talk to me incessantly about every detail of her life. Including stuff I really would have been better off not knowing. If she’d gotten one of these notices, I’d have heard about it in spades!) And the neighbour on the other side hasn’t mowed the strip between his driveway and the hedge on the property line since May, so the grass there is about two feet high. I don’t think he’s gotten a notice, either, and he hasn’t mowed in a lot longer than my twelve-day hiatus. So it can only be the mean lady.
The only thing I can figure is that she called the city’s department of code enforcement and complained about the high grass. She has also used her weed whacker to whack all my morning glories off of the fence they just put up — the one that is at least a foot over the property line on my side.
As soon as I can afford it, I’m hiring a surveyor to plot my land. If her fence is over the line, I’ll make her move it. And this weekend, I am going to Round-up the area between my driveway and the fence, and then I am going to plant English ivy in it. And as soon as I pay off my debts, I am putting up a six-foot fence from the back fence to the front sidewalk. Then I won’t have to tolerate any garbage from her any more. I wonder if I could get a restraining order against her for harrassment and verbal assault? I wonder if the other neighbours would testify to her shrieking tirades earlier this year?