Passive Aggressive Lawn Care

When I first saw the house we live in, it was April. I paid no attention to the two flat next door, north of us. Like I said, it was April and the yards were still in hibernation from the winter. Everybody's yard looked about the same. In fact it snowed again between the time we first looked at the house and the time we closed on it. It wasn't until summer that I realized the guy next door did not mow his lawn, ever. Didn't seem to care that weeds were popping up between the stairs on his porch and were growing as big as large saplings. By late June, while my yard looked neat and well tended, his yard had become a mini jungle. So I mowed it. I continued to mow it all that summer, and the next summer, and the next. I just couldn't allow that mess to be growing next to my yard. And then this spring two brothers bought that property, the bank having foreclosed on my previous neighbor. Their plan is to rehab the place and flip it. I have no problem with that. It could only improve things, and I thought surely they would keep that yard trimmed and mowed. Don't get me wrong, they are both very nice boys, but they aren't mowing the lawn. So for the first two months of this summer I mowed my lawn right up to theirs, leaving a clean line of mowed grass up against their jungle of weeds. I thought they'd get the point. They didn't. So two weeks ago I mowed it all down. The next week I mowed my grass again, leaving a clean line where my grass met their now growing grass. Sort of a passive aggressive message to them. They didn't get the message. Yesterday I mowed my lawn again, leaving the sharp contrast between my neat and trimmed yard up against their three weeks growth of grass and weeds. When I was all done, I stood on my side and looked it all over. Beautiful, my yard looked fine. Then I looked over to my new neighbor's yard. It was a mess, an ugly weedy mess. I couldn't stand it. So I started up my lawnmower and I cut it all down. Like I said, the brothers who bought the place next door are nice boys. But not that nice. Not one word of thanks for my mowing their lawn all summer. Not a goddamned peep.