Neighbors

I know what they say bout fences and neighbors, but what you you do when you don't have a fence?

Backing up, On the west side of my house is a widow lady. I hear she's a relatively recent widow, like less than five years, but more than one year. In the time since her husband died, she's made her yard into a one woman botanical garden. There are raised flower beds all over the place, buried irrigation tubing in the flower beds, huge flowers out back, new sod (in a part of the country that points and laughs at sod), the whole works.

It looks like a pain in the ass to me. My idea of a nice yard is grass for kids and dog to run and play on and maybe a few perrenials that come up on their own.

Well, last week Noah was digging in her flower beds and unearthed an irrigation line (not that they are very deep, you can see them just looking at the beds) he also left his trucks there.

Then today she comes and tells me they've tossed her bricks in the ditch. See, she has several landscaping bricks stacked up behind her shed right next to the drainage ditch that she had dug around her property. (can you say attractive nuisance?) The boys, probably with help from the bigger boy down the street, had tossed about half of them down into the ditch.

I made my boys go help her pick them up. Seemed right. Noah could barely lift them, Gideon didn't do much better, but somehow they'd scattered them with little trouble. While we are picking up bricks my oldest the chatter box is talking away to the woman.

Turns out she's the one who's been responsible for my cat, gypsy's occasional disappearances. She supposedly, "accidentally" shut my cat in her garage and left her there for three days. And had the nerve to complain about the fact that the cat shut in the garage thirsty and starving made a mess trying to get out.

So, like I was saying, anyone know how to get along with neighbors without a fence.