If you saw my photos of my lawn, you will notice that I'm surrounded by:

a) Crappy but at least he sort of tries in the rear. Too bad he has no idea what he's doing--he reminds me of William Hung singing. Can't, but insists he try.
b) Not bad and he does fairly well on the southern rear.
c) Lets it get so high the township has to come in and cut it...and has nothing but weeds on the south
d) Cuts it, but it's still a pile of crapola to the north.
e) Really quite nice across the street.

Believe me, I feel the pain you experience from your surrounding morons. I sympathize. The only thing you can do is learn to ignore it as best you can.

As difficult as that is.

The consolation? YOUR lawn looks WONDERFUL by comparison.

Rudy turn it around, your neighbor probably thinks you are the idiot putting all that effort in your yard:>)

You are not alone.

I live in a small midwestern town.(pop. 5000) I walk almost every day...2 miles on the even days and 3 miles on the odd.

I take a different route each day, And I know where most of the really great lawns are. I'm always checking them out. Some are done by a lawn service but most are like mine ... "doing it your self and loving it".

I'd say that every "lawn wacko" is blessed with at least one "trashy lawn" either next door or across the street. I thinks it's Murphy's Law. Or, just GOD's way of keeping us humble...

I'm sort of lucky in that the trash lawn across my alley is owned by a really nice guy...who just can't stand being out doors. He's the local newspaper editor and he works long hours. He mows but, that's it. I also cleaned his walk most of the winter with my snowblower...he has a small snowblower ...but of course, it won't start.

I much prefer the stealth method. Really. Please do not scold me, as I'm not reformable. My wicked ways have provided too much success for too long.

You observe the guy loading up on a Friday afternoon or evening? A little trip up north? He's not gone thirty minutes, but I've got the hose end sprayer out, and that ragged lawn gets a fast paced dose of Weed B Gone. No smell left, by the time he's back on Sunday afternoon.

I also have quite a bit of flexibility in my workweek schedule, with another neighbor who doesn't. A personal day, on a Wednesday with no rain predicted? You betcha. Spray by nine in the morning, and here's the cute part: be spraying my own lawn, near his, when he comes home at six.....there's a little smell in the air, but it's obviously from my lawn.

On one occasion, a neighbor or so ago, a comment was made 'all these weeds die at the same time?'....."you betcha, Ray, it's getting hotter. My guess is, all these weeds will be dying, because of the heat, pretty soon, now, if it stays dry." Outstanding. Sometimes, I just outdo myself.

And my personal fave: Harry? Philes here. If I could ask a favor, I've got my tractor up for sale, and I've got a guy coming by to see it, but he wants to try it out, and says my lawn isn't a fair test. I'd never leave your lawn half mowed, but this guy's a turkey, and wants to see that it cuts uniformly: can I mow your lawn on Saturday, and show this guy he ought to buy my tractor? I'll go slow around the fence and flowerbeds, but I wanna show this guy that (pick a brand that harry does NOT have) [Deere][Sears][LawnBoy] isn't all it's cracked up to be, and he can get a fine cut out of my tractor. You're a prince. Thanks. (I really should have dragged the spray wagon, filled with Weed B Gone mix. Mrs. Philes, who was emptying her purses, looking for bond money, just would not let me do it. For the record, my co-worker, who did part of the mowing, voted yes. But we didn't.)

The present neighbor is as manipulative as I am. Darn shame. I offered to spray his lawn, twice, a week apart, to get rid of the creeping charlie in both our lawns, and he perked right up, and offered to provide the beer, the shade on the back porch, etc, since I was going to be spraying with my weed be gone, and my tractor/sprayer combination. We agreed. While sitting on that porch, drinking beer, he offered the opinion that I was a super guy, and that with that tractor/pull behind spreader of mine, heck, I could probably drop fertilizer on his lawn as well as mine, and have longer straight rows, ignoring the boundary between us.I agreed, and I buy the fertilizer twelve bags at a time, rather than six, and he pays for his six bags over beers on his back porch. I even was treated to hot dogs for lunch, last time. His lawn looks the best it ever has, my creeping charlie boundary (that chemical 'war zone' with that horrid perennial pest)is an acre from my lot, and the neighbor has even started mowing tall grass, rather than short. Because he's an expert: just ask him.

So don't give up. Perhaps, you should watch a few poker tournaments on TV...."I've got nothing? No, I'm not gonna fold. I RAISE!"

The game ain't over 'til it's over.

My guess is that I'm not the only 'tresspasser' (or good samaritan, depending on which side of the fence you're on) on this forum. Anybody else? Anybody got a good idea I can work into my repertoire?

I'm another vote in the "don't give up" camp. When I first bought my house, I had a very weedy lawn and no time to do anything about it. My next door neighbor spent all his free time in the lawn. I think he actually used scissors to trim around fences etc.

But the advice he gave me was to water twice a day to keep the grass healthy and the weeds at bay. I had already read that the biggest problems for Utah lawns was too much water (this, in the desert). So I knew that wasn't the right approach.

I honestly think the turning point was finding GW, raising my mower deck and buying a weed hound. I'm now the one with the weed free lawn. I've also managed to get a few other people to mow higher and water less often and more deeply (although I think I'm the only one brave enough to go once a week). Last weekend, I saw somebody down the street using a weed hound. I walked over to tell him it worked better if you give it a twist, and he told me he had seen me use it, so he knew it worked. He had already finished with the weeds, but thought he could use it for aeration.

My guess is we all have those kinds of neighbors unless you live on a 50 acre plot. I have 2 beauts next to me. Neither has mowed their weeds more than 3 times a season...and most likely less. So because of that I get to enjoy all the new weed seeds from their areas, and I think all the weeds are represented.

I have, on occasion, run my tractor over their (visible to me) "lawn" areas just to tidy it up some for a while, hoping I wouldn't get chastised for doing it.

With most neighbors you can pretty quickly tell which category they fall into: lazy type, no time for the lawn type, can't stand all those creatures outdoors type, and the only one treatable by a gung-ho GardenWeb Lawn forum member...misguided and uneducated type. It's just my luck that my two are the very first category, which is a lost cause.

So, I endeavor to continue fighting the lawn fight as best I can in hopes that they will see the light.

We have to have hope...right?!?

On one side of me there is a church which hires a lawn service, can't complain because it looks nice. But, on the other side I have a neighbor who has let his backyard get so bad the weeds have actually turned into brush. On the flip side he scalps his front yard constantly. It doesn't matter if it hasn't rained in a month, I think to myself all the time "he's out there cutting his dirt again".

My neighs probably get annoyed with my lawn because I mow so short, a half an inch that their lawns look unkempt in comparison. I don't care if the neighbs don't have a nice lawn as long as it is mowed regularly and doesn't self sow into the other yards.

Philies - try triclopyr -- very little, if any smell at all -- perfect stealth herbicide.

philes21,

I wish you were my neighbor. My lawn looks like crap and I can't fix it, no matter what I try (Overseeding, Weed-B-Gon, Fertilizer, Core Aerate, etc). Now I'm tilling (Clay seems to compacted), removing rocks and adding compost to give it another shot. Wish I had someone like you next door to help out.

I live in a small neighborhood...30 homes and deed restricted...so people are required to install sprinklers and maintain their lawns. Now, the word "maintain" is very subjective. My neighborhood has several folk who qualify for the "more money than brains" definition. They seem to think that by owning a John Deere lawn tractor, it makes their lawns better.

This is my first year with a new bermuda lawn I installed over the winter. To say that it's head and shoulders above everyone else is an understatement. My next door neighbor, whose St. Augustine lawn looks like crap, asked me what I did to make mine look so good. I just replied "It's work...you get out of it what you put into it." This is the same neighbor who went with his panties in a wad to the Owners Association about how my lawn...pre-install...was all dirt. I figure the better my lawn looks, the worse his looks. Karma is an evil mistress indeed.

Although it is a little disheartening to live next to people like this, my neighbor across the street put it best. He said "If it happens on the other side of my property line, I could care less."

My neighbor insists on keeping pines in his front which is ruining my lawn. Says it keeps the temp down on his house. The shade NEVER hits his house. It GOES in my yard. I tried showing him when I paid to trim his trees on my side. I offered to cut them down. He said no cause they shade his house from the front. The ones in back do hit his house in the morning but by 10AM, the shades in my yard. I paid to trim those trees on my side also.

i guess i am the problem neighbor on my street. i only have 1 neighbor unless you count horse pasture, and part of the 2 acres i have directly next to him is garden. the rest i cut when it gets high. i cut most of my lawn every week, but the area between us is VERY uneven and will bounce you off the mower. his father used to own my house, and that area was the dirt track for all the grandkids. i told him if he wants to spray it occassionally to keep the weeds out of his yard, that is fine. i will cut it before it gets more than 10 inches high, but not much more often.

i HOPE to be able to level it out this summer. once it is level and smooth, i will cut it with teh regular rotation.

since i have a corner lot, only horse pasture buts up to me on the other side. the guy who keeps the horses out there gets something to kill the weeds and i spray it for him. i think it is called graze-on, it has to be a certain type so that the horses can still graze and not have to be moved from teh pasture until the weeds are dead. this helps part of my yard, but the weeds still spread pretty quickly. i just round up the 2 acres around the house itself, and let the rest grow what it wants. the bermuda grows in fine, with teh exception of 2 small areas that are almost exclusively in the shade. i have to smooth and seed those soon.

I have the opposite problem. I just moved into a new development (we are the 3rd family to move in, about 40 other homes going in around us).

One neigbor has already (within a week of my moving in) told me that he wants to make sure that no-one walks on his yard.. he said that will damage his yard and he spends too much time on it to have it destroyed by people walking on it. (What good is grass if ya can't even walk on it?) - And by the way, I saw your 2 year old riding his bike on my driveway..make sure it doesn't happen again....

WOW...welcome to the neighborhood.... I am not sure what he is doing to his yard that is so valuable. I have not even had to do the first cut on my grass yet. He has mowed his twice, fertilized and water twice a day. It looks no better than mine. I tried to tell him.. we are having highs of 60 degrees...the lawn is NOT growing... but he disagrees.. my no cut to his 2 +fert, but my lawn looks better... Oh well, what do I know.. I have kid's who may use a neighbor's driveway to turn around in....

However my other neighbor is a great guy and I think we are going to have fun messing with the crazy neighbor.

mark

I usually run my fertilizer a couple of rows wide; my neighbor nevery really complained. I feel sorry for my father-in-law who takes decent care of his lawn and whose neighbor has that Zoiya (?) grass that is yellow 9 months out of the year...its creeping into his lawn slowly but surely!

Many people do not have the wherewithall, or the knowwithall about how to care for a lawn....and frankly, some don't give a d*** about it.

Whether he's the moron or whether you are for calling your neighbor such a name is the question here I think.
If you were indeed a "neighbor", then you would be trying to convince him that he also could have a decent lawn.
Not necessarily what you have....but something to maybe he could be proud of....but then, maybe he is already satisfied.

Idiot.....moron.....please Rudy, don't be so hard on yourself.

Thanks jeannie7, could not have said it better!

Update on neighbors yard. Pines still there. Now he and one across the street love to water the yard full of weeds all night at least once a week then follow up a couple times during week. If it happens again, I might turn them in. We were in volunteer water restriction earlier. Not now. I tried talking, they just ignore me or look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them they are just flooding the yard and feeding the trees but drowning the grass(weeds) in their yards.