I think ranting about my neighbor is going to become a regular feature here. There’s just too much good (bad) stuff to pass up…

Given the ridiculous heat and the fact that my lawn is staying alive only through the nourishing power of fertilizer and thousands of gallons of irrigation, I mow, on average, every other weekend. I did the mowing, did the trimming, and was putting the power equipment away when my neighbor fired up his, much more wussy than mine, mower. Not a big deal, glad to see the guy take an interest in lawn care. I won’t get into the fact that he actually ground it down to bare earth or that in the 6 months grass has been growing, he has never actually done any trimming.

Hearing the neighbor shut down his mower, I stepped onto the back patio for a tasty smoky treat and to look askance at the travesty the guy regularly inflicts on his lawn. I know my lawn and it only took a quick look over to see that something wasn’t right. Somehow, this putz had managed to leave a three foot tall swath just on his side of the property line between our houses. I know it’s on his side of the line because there’s a steak at the back corner and another at the front curb and that remembering my high school geometry, I can identify a line using those two points.

I’ll be the first to admit that property boundaries on our subdivision are a little odd, but they are all straight lines, rather than the gently curving arc that now appears to separate us. Really, numbnuts, how the hell can you not know where your property stops? And even if you didn’t know, the part I cut twenty minutes before you started should have been a pretty damn good indication. Yes, I know it seems strange and intuitively, you’d think that the boundary would be equidistant between our houses, but in reality, 2/3 of the open space is on your side of the line.

If you can’t get something this relatively easy figured out, how in the name of all things holy do you function in actual society and deal with issues that require more than breathing and walking all at the same time?

Someone once commented on good fences making good neighbors… do you suppose that’s still true when you make your fence out of razor wire and seed it with claymores?