A large portion of the patented plants here in the US have been bred rather than produced from sports, etc. If I had to guess, I'd guess that 85% or more are the results of intentional breeding efforts. Lots of professional plant breeders/hybridizers/growers have fairly large operations, where hundreds or thousands of plants are produced, evaluated, and narrowed down to just a few individual plants that are later introduced into the trade. Lots of money, time, and effort are sometimes represented by a patented plant. Personally, I think I would be fine with the US laws being changed to allow for private/non-commercial vegetative propagation of patented plants. I think it's pretty commonly done already, and most people that would do it then are already doing it now. I still think it's a good idea to know what the law is, now. I think very few people really understand the US laws regarding plant patents, PVRs, or the other more unusual plant-related protections...not to mention the trade-name/trademark issues.

What can I say--I feel you pain. My MIL has been with us for a little over a year now. I have recently quit my job of 9 years to stay home with her. She is 85 and her mobility is not good, confused on a daily basis, short term memory is bad and right now trying to keep her dressed seems to be the new thing with her. All in all she is a joy--pleasant and loveable but a real handfull sometimes. She stayed alone while my DH and I worked for nearly a year. I lived in fear that she would fall or get hurt while we were gone. We came home and found the house full of smoke and we knew we were really pushing our luck with this. She (for some reason) filled a skillet full of oil, placed it on the stove, turned it on and walked into the other room and forgot it. She didn't even see the smoke. She apparently fell asleep cause she said a loud noise woke her up--smoke alarms. And she still didn't notice the smoke. We came in just in the nick of time. I didn't go back to work. The first week I was home with her I was amazed at how good she was at "hiding" her confusion. Somedays she shines like a little star but others not so good and we are having a lot more not so good right now. I'm really suprised she didn't get hurt--we were so lucky. I REALLY miss going to dinner and running to the store or just going somewhere. It seems like my life revolves around how she is today. I miss doing things with just my husband or daughter. We sort of do shifts--one of us stays with her so the other can get out for a while. Like you we couldn't get any straight answers about the legalitys of leaving her home alone--and still can't . I guess we just have to go with our judgment with this. I keep telling myself how wonderful she's been to me through the years and how I"ll be in that shape one day. It's not easy.

lukkiirish, the source you quoted and your comments missed one important point of Adverse Possession. The possession must be open, hostile, actual, continuous AND EXCLUSIVE. Since the owner is maintaining open, hostile, actual and continuous use of the property, it's NOT exclusive and therefore Adverse Possession fails. Plus it's likely the other person you refer to wouldn't carry all four of the other criteria either so it's not an issue of consequence. And there's a time frame in most places of fifteen years for it to happen anyway. No need for paranoia. I still don't understand how big an area it is to be fenced. Put up some lilacs or other weed-like growth that's fast, bushy and a pest for pedestrians to deal with. Cost is little. It's pretty easy to get some starters and it's just labor of putting it in, possibly watering it a bit and you'll have a blockade up in a short time. As to the initial question, yes it'd bug me. But I imagine you've known about it since you moved in? A fence doesn't have to be a big deal to keep out most people so it doesn't have to be prohibitive in cost.

There were some things on our plans that were "flexible" like the north wall of the walk out basement. Until the spot was actually excavated and the builder saw the grade we didn't know how much of that side would be exposed vs underground, so we didn't know if any windows could be added to that side of the basement until the walls started to go up. We added the windows to the budget as a "Hope we can" so we didn't have to come up with extra money if it was possible. It turns out we were able to put in 2 full and 1 half window in there. But we didn't know for sure until the foundation was poured. Is this something like that, where changes were made due to unknown circumstances? Or changes made by the lay of the land, or hidden problems? You say he changed the heigth? Taller? Shorter? A few inches or a few feet?