My parents have living in the same house for several years, and they are pretty easy to get along with. Well, my mom called me and was complaining about the neighbors on either side of them. In the past there have been complaints from her about people hanging stuff on their clothes line, without there permission, a neighbor's son who had to park his pick up truck right up next to their front porch (they are very narrow pieces of property and this area seemed like a good place to extend his driveway) and then tore up the lawn when it rained, and even one neighbor putting food garbage under their back shed. Honestly, I have found some of the stories a little bizarre, but I try to listen about them and reassure her. On several occasions my father and my mother have spoken to the neighbors and have tried to explain to them about boundaries and respect for other people's property. It seems that before my parents moved in for about the past 20 years this house that they are living in had been a rental house, so apparently they just did whatever they wanted to, because after all the neighbor's didn't really own the house anyway, a third party did, so they just took over.
If you met any of these people, then you would probably understand, they are true country folk, and not to top heavy if you know what I mean. In any case, mom called me up yesterday and was completely enraged. While my parents had been away about a week ago, someone had come through their yard, and cut down two really straggly bushes up against the property line. Dad said that he figured it was one of the neighbors, but he didn't really care since they left just the flowering bushes, it looked nice. Then while dad was at work yesterday, Mom heard one of the neighbors outside with a weed trimmer. My nephew came running in and said Grandma did you know that Kevin (one of the neighbors) is cutting down all of your plants. Well, Mom knew just where to look and sure enough he cut down every last one. She ran outside, and yelled at Kevin and his response was, well it is my property. She assured him that he was mistaken and that he only had the right to cut down the parts of the plant that grew onto his property such as the limbs etc. Then he proceeded to tell her that the bushes were filled with poison ivy and that his wife was allergic and that is why he cut them down. So her answer, which I thought was a pretty smart one was, "Well, does that mean that if I am allergic to pine that I can come over there and chop down your pine tree!". Meantime, the joke really is that this man's wife never even goes outside. I think that my parents have seen her maybe 3 times this year.
In any case, I tried to reassure mom that some people just don't get the thing about respecting other people's property. Some people were not raised with any boundaries.