We are landowners who "lease" land to a neighbor farmer who needs more land for hay and field corn. This is very common in our area of New England. We have a hand shake agreement. The farmer gets all the produce from the land and is responsible for all fertilizing etc. In return, our land is in good use. The corn field is popular with deer and wild turkeys providing us with a nice view. I believe the former farmer leased the land for $100 a year from the former owner. This was a token amount. The corn field on a slope was having serious erosion problems. A second field required travel over a culvert which was breaking down. When my husband told the former farmer it would be necessary for him to replace the culver, the farmer balked and said it was too expensive, etc. Since his equipment was the only equipment traveling over this culvert with the exception of an occasional passenger vehicle, it was his fault the culvert needed to be replaced. My husband decided it was time to end the relationship and gave the farmer notice that it was his last year. After 2 or 3 years, my husband was approached by another farmer to use this land with the agreement that the farmer would be fully responsible for restoring the fields to proper condition and to restore another field that had been fallow for decades. The farmer is also a professional logger and had the crew and equipment to remove trees and bushes that had encroached on the fields. This was an enormous amount of work but also generated some good pine lumber and chips. It was agreed that the farmer deserved to keep and re-sell the lumber and chips since he and his crew had done all the work. Keep in mind that if the farmer isn't taking care of the acreage, the landowner has to. (i.e. brush hogging, field mowing) If handshake agreements weren't customary in our area, I would fully advise a written agreement that defined the responsibility for soil fertility and general maintenance of the property. It should also specify what kind of pesticides are allowed and, yes, who gets the fruits and vegetables. Attention should be given to who is allowed to pick. My sweet young granddaughter does damage to sugar snap pea vines when she picks pea pods to snack on. If the landowner has pets, this should also be considered. A friend's dog tore down his sweet corn, not raccoons. A family pet might be a serious nuisance.

If you want to have your ROS somewhere else in the garden, I find that it is easy to make cuttings. These could be planted where you want them to be. Then you could remove the original troublesome bush. IF you want to kill it, there are some herbicides out there that will certainly take care of it. Round up works wonders on killing the plant, as does straight javex. When I was young, I recall my dad wanted to have the city remove a dying maple tree from the city boulevard, and they refused because it was not dead enough. A few copper nails worked wonders, and the next year they removed a completely dead tree, as he smiled from inside the house.

Deer just LOVE Hibiscus (cold hardy or Tropical, makes no difference). Remember, PEOPLE drink Hibiscus tea, the deer will eat the flowers, leaves and bark! Been there, done that.

So we've moved in 3wks ago and the builder came with his excavator and tried to grade the land himself. I insisted he use the laser thing. My dad has one and came to shoot elevations with it prior to. Thus, we already had it figured out for the builder. We thought the best way to go about it would be to drain the water away from the patio and around the side of the house down into the front yard where it would finally drain into the street gutters. The back half of the yard didn't need any work according to my dad and his little laser. Of course, builder refused to slope around the side and use the laser. He said that you have to "eyeball" these sorts of things. My dad said that he'd do it with the builder's excavator while builder was present. (my dad graded his one acre piece of property himself and it drains beautifully) Builder won't allow anyone to drive his excavator except those who work for him. Thus, we let him do what he wanted to do (drain it to the back into a little "ditch" that he claims runs throghout the neighborhood between the backyards) This little ditch that he's referring to is simply a low spot between my property and the people who live behind us because they built their yard up. This low spot is still higher than our yard, so of course draining into there won't work. Even if it would have. I don't want a ditch on the edge of our property line! It was CLEAR even by eyeball that his plan wouldn't work. I asked him what we should do if it still didn't drain. He said that he'd come back and try again. Naturally, it rained that afternoon after he left and here are the results: Now what? He either needs to agree to let my dad do it or hire a professional. It's in the contract that the land has to be graded properly. We don't want things to get ugly yet because there is one final issue that will need to be resolved. We haven't approached him about this yet. The driveway slopes into the carport, so the carport fills with water every time it rains. We are going to have to fight to get more concrete poured ontop of the carport so that it's higher than the driveway. Builder will freak when we bring this up. Thus, we're trying to keep things nice as long as possible.