We have two next door neighbors, one on either side, and each is a piece of work. Next Door Neighbor 1 (NDN1) lives to the northwest side of us and has an extensive collection of semi trailers, travel trailers, house trailers, old buses, and sheds which are largely hidden behind a row of tall reeds growing in the ditch between our properties. This allows us to maintain an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude which in turn fosters good neighbor relations with NDN1. He’s chronically short of funds and periodically hits us up for loans, but has a Wicomico County country charm that always seems to make us smile regardless.
NDN2 lives to the East of us. He’s a retired chicken farmer who, I think, wishes he were still a farmer (although I don’t think he misses the chickens much). He has about an acre in front of his house that he has been alternately mowing, disking, and dragging for months with a really large (for one acre) tractor and so far has only planted a modest vegetable garden in one corner of the field. We’re still waiting to see what all of the other activity has been about. He seems to adore his tractor because several times after has finished mowing his property he has proceeded on to mow our adjoining back field (which we may not mow as often as he mows his own back field but it is always mowed at least once a month – it’s a field, not a yard). There’s no apparent rhyme or reason to it, it just seems like he wants a reason to ride his tractor.
He and his wife moved to our little lane about a year and a half ago after putting up a neat and trim little modular house, and we were pleased to have them as neighbors. We have grown gradually dismayed as their property became increasingly cluttered with broken farm machinery, implements, and God-knows-what else. But they are elderly and moved here from their much larger chicken farm and we understand that it might be difficult for them to part with so many of their things (we do wish that they would exercise a bit more restraint in collecting additional things, however). They don’t chain their dogs or burn their trash so they’re easier to like than some of the other families in the area, and we’ve gotten along with them most of the time.
Sometimes when we’ve been swamped with work his mowing has been a help. But other times he has mowed down a field of wildflowers and really upset me. Not once has he asked us if it would be all right with us to mow. We just look out the window and there he is, driving his tractor and bushhog back and forth across our field. My husband doesn’t want to upset the apple cart by complaining about the mowing for two reasons: One, he wants to maintain cordial relations with NDN2 because we’re neighbors. Two, it’s my husband who usually does our mowing and there have been times when NDN2 has saved him hours of work so he’s understandably reluctant to tell NDN2 to cease and desist. It’s not ideal but in the interest of family and neighborhood harmony I haven’t wanted to push it. Not, that is, until I came back from being out of town for four days recently and was greeted with a soldierly row of white PVC pipes sticking out the ground, marching from the road all along and through the middle of my recently planted hedge, courtesy of NDN2.
It turns out that NDN2 has a different idea of our property line than we do. And it’s not just our opinion that he takes issue with – he thinks that the boundary marker that was set by his own surveyor is in the wrong place. What do you do with a mind set like that? If it were a matter of inches or a foot I would probably shrug my shoulders and not worry. And at the end of the property line near the road it IS only a few inches off. But by the time you follow his line to the rear of our adjoining properties he’s off by 10-12 feet, too much to ignore.
Worse, it runs right through a line of shrubs that I planted to create a hedge between our property and his. I was careful to plant them 4-5 feet inside the property line so that they would intrude very little, if at all, onto his property once they grew to full size (at the moment none of them exceed 2.5 feet in diameter; they’re just babies). I’ve been nursing them through the winter and spring; now I’m worried that he’s going to run his bushhog right over them. We’ve told him that the boundary line is as marked by a licensed surveyor, end of discussion, but he remains adamant that the marker is in the wrong place. Conversations have become strained.
I hope, hope, hope that he has the presence of mind to call his surveyor and to accept what his surveyor says (if it turns out we’re in the wrong we will be happy to admit it and will certainly apologize for the misunderstanding). But I’m doubting his presence of mind; this afternoon we looked out the window toward our back field and there he was on his tractor with his bush hog driving back and forth, mowing our field. He’s left the baby shrubs standing for now, but what on earth is next here in Wicomicoville?
