Well the fence saga continues. I was up early on Saturday morning and decided to get a head start on watering the plants. This way I don't get their way and I avoid the hot sun. As I hooked up my soaker hoses I noticed several rocks from my neighbor's yard in my yard. I kindly put them back(no I did not throw them. As fate would have it, they were gone for the weekend. Monday evening, I had to do some handwatering. As I'm start to water, I noticed several glad bulbs in the middle of the yard. The wife was outside so I made sure she saw me go back up to the fence line and place the bulbs in the dirt. I'm sure there will be more over the next few days and I'll bury them then. Later on when I was taking to my other neighbor I thought I saw something thrown in the yard. She had thrown over a small clump of dry dirt with a weed attached. Then I found purple clover that had been dug up and left in my garden. No I don't have any purple clover in my yard. I usually have white but none since the drought. I put them in the lawn bags and I start to get angry. I decided to stay outside since it was cool (90 degrees) and work off my anger What I heard next made me smile. This whole time I thought the husband was building the fence with the help of a friend. As it turned out, they hired some guy who is charging them by the hour and taking his sweet time in getting work done. The wife was frustrated that not much had been done. So now she's trying to find someone else. I know I shouldn't take any pleasure in this knowledge but it did dissipate my anger.

I feel for you! We have bad neighbors on all sides of us, luckily there is some space (we're in the boonies, but you still get bad neighbors who burn plastic and let it smolder all day and the wind blows the stench into your house). I planted A LOT of bamboo, mostly to hide the ugly view of the one neighbors property that we can see in winter (and see all the garbage they have piled everywhere, along with the 30 dogs he has (he runs a puppymill, and do the authorities care? NO.). Destruction of property is a bad thing. Maybe you can get some form of mediation involved? I think that is cheaper than a lawyer. Sorry to hear about your neighbors, ours are really bad. One we have property bordering with tries to steal our land by putting up goat fencing on our side, he's built tree stands (with boards and lots of nails)in our real nice oak trees, their one son was in it and when my husband went up to the kid, he pointed a bb gun at him! The little jerk never even apologized (neither did his parents, no surprise), the kid started ARGUING with my DH about where the property line is (Sorry, but my DH knows how to read a topo map, as well as survey maps too, and WE know where the line is). Of course we called the police on these jerks, after all the other stuff they've done, it was time.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of "robber sues homeowner and wins" stories seem to be urban myths. I did study one case in law school where a homeowner was successfully sued, but in that case, he had set up a gun on some sort of automatic trigger connected to the front door of an unoccupied cabin. The court said that this was going too far, taking the chance of killing someone to protect property, rather than life. The basic rule on self-defense is that you have to try to run away rather than use force, if you can do it safely. That basic rule does *not* hold true in your own home. There is no "duty to retreat" in your own home. The other basic rule on self-defense is that you can use only enough force to repel the attack. However, what amount of force is reasonable depends on your duty to retreat. Since you have no duty to retreat inside your home, you can use more force than you would outside your home. As to whether you can use wasp spray as a weapon, I don't know the answer. My best guess would be that if you used it during an attack on the street, the courts would treat it as any other dangerous weapon. If you used it in your home (or car, at least in some states), even if you planned to use it as a weapon, I doubt there would be an issue. The law varies by state. If you want to see what your state thinks about these matters, look up the "castle doctrine," as in "my home is my castle." As a practical matter, I think most people are okay using whatever force they need to protect themselves inside their own homes. And that's even more so for women. Where I could see it getting dicey is if some teenaged kid broke into a house for drug money, having no weapon and thinking the house was unoccupied, tried to run away when he saw someone was home, and the man of the house grabbed him and beat the living s*^t out of the kid. Even then, I'll bet most police officers would tell the kid that he shouldn't have been in the house in the first place. As to whether the man of the house could then be sued, well, of course he could. Some of the castle laws protect people from being sued in these situations, but for the most part, anyone can sue anyone. Can't necessarily win, but can start the suit.

nice property! i have extensive experience in screening out nosy neighbors.... Norway Spruce (picea abies). Planed 12ft apart in sawtooth pattern. Juniperus Virginiana Burkii. planted 8ft apart in soldier row or sawtooth. Autumn Blaze Maple - 20ft apart. Pin Oak (or one of the Oak varieties that holds its leaves all winter) - 20ft apart. White Pine - 25ft apart. Put the conifers in groups in the sight line of the neighbor houses, put the deciduous in between. Avoid: Blue Spruce (Picea Pungens) - grows too slow, can't handle midwest humidity, will lose all its lower branches after 15 years. Many Pine species don't do well in midwest either. suffer tip blight, etc. look around your place to see which ones do well. Silver Maple - while it grows super fast it's a trash tree that you'll be sorry you planted after 15 years.