Obsessive neighbour losing the plot over leaves

[Sparkies2012]

Our neighbours are a relatively elderly couple and since they moved in have had a bee in their bonnet over leaves that blow onto their driveway. The gate to our driveway is opposite to their open driveway, separated by a narrow road. Our next door neighbour has a massive old tree in their garden that produces a lot of leaves, most of which fall into our driveway. We don’t really bother collecting the leaves, as it is an endless task at this time of the year, but the elderly couple is constantly on at us because the leaves blow across the road into their driveway and the odd one gets in their front door. Now we have told them we don’t produce the leaves, and they don’t bother us, so if they are bothered by the leaves either pick them up or take it up with our neighbour who owns the tree. But now they have even started collecting them in black bags and, under the cover of darkness, leaving them in front of our driveway gate, or throwing them over our fence. I’m tempted next time they do this to open the bag and dump it over their driveway again. AIBU by not picking up the leaves in our garden?

My old neighbours complained about the caravan on my drive within 24 hours of it being delivered. I had planned to move it to my field that weekend but once they’d complained about it I had no choice but to delay moving it for a month.
If I hadn’t been selling the house I’d have got a second caravan to replace it with - one with smashed windows, no door and covered in green algae!

Just empty the bags back out. Every single time. They'll soon get fed up when they have not only that day's leaves, but cumulative day's leaves to clear up.

Wrap the bags in Christmas paper and bows!

I agree! Take them back every single time!

Why not keep the bags, punch a few holes in the bottom- then next year you'll have lovely leaf mould aas a garden mulch. Great for flower borders and veg beds. 😁

Old people with too much time on their hands get obsessive about stuff like this. We will all probably be like it too.

Take the bags they leave and under cover of night stealthily post the leaves a handful at a time through their letterbox. Deny all knowledge and play dumb that there ever was a bag there.

Or depending how much time you have on your hands, mix leaves with pva glue until you have a mould able consistency and create a large cock shaped leaf sculpture that you weigh down with a few bricks in the middle and position on their front doorstep to greet them in the morning. This also comes with the amusement of watching them try to bag it up and dispose of it.

Or alternatively mix the leaves with glitter in folded sheet of paper, put in an envelope and post to them.

I take your leaf dumping neighbours and raise you my cat shit over the fence into my garden throwing neighbours.

Where do they keep their outside bins? If I could I'd just put the bags of leaves in them.

It would be up to the CPS, not OP.

I think OP should file a report with Environmental Health that they are flytipping, seeing as she has footage.

Is it your cat’s shit @Duckingella ?

I'm with the 'you are on camera flytipping on my property' brigade.
They're batshit.

We have laws and rules so that we all know what behaviour is expected of us and what we can and can't do. This is very important to avoid harming each other.

These neighbours, by flytipping, are breaking a law that is intended to protect us from being knee-high in someone else's rubbish. The rest of us are under no obligation to appease them in the hope that they will stop breaking that law. In fact, we should resist all temptation to appease these entitled lawbreakers. Why should wrongdoers be rewarded?

It is certainly not appropriate to involve children in any appeasement.

I have had a very similar situation in the past. If it’s not your tree there’s not a lot you can do. With elderly neighbours, sometimes they fixate on odd things due to having more time on their hands. I ended up putting a cheap spotlight camera up. I’d then laugh at the footage of them gathering the leaves before then running off when the light comes on. Last year Lidl had a really good leaf blower for cheap. I bought one and would very occasionally go out and attempt to blow them back onto our drive. I’d do this when they were in their garden and could see me. It was all for dramatic effect, “oh these bloody leaves” but at least then they stopped with the eye rolling and passive aggressive notes through my letter box.

Would it be possible to get the local children to clean them up ? The neighbours could contribute and pay per bag ?

They are perfectly capable of sweeping up and collecting leaves from their drive - they just aren't old enough yet (or intelligent enough) to have learned how to appropriately dispose of different types of rubbish once it is ready for dispatch.

Rather than doing any sweeping, I'm sure any of the local children over 4yo would be able to educate them about how we get rid of rubbish by putting it into a bin.

Open the bags and chuck the leaves over your own drive again. It will wind them up something chronic.

Eventually they will realise the sensible approach is to put their leaves in their own bin.

Yeah, this. They sound absolutely batshit. It's crazy how small your world can get when you're retired. I pray I'm never like that.

Wet leaves can be quite a hazzard for the less infirm bones, my gran broke her hip falling on wet leaves. just go have a chat - be nice - not your fault and maybe they don't realise but surely for a few weeks you can between you explain they are not from your tree but can you all work together and bring in the owner of the tree to the conversation, maybe they can contribute to a leaf blower?

These people are fit and able enough to package the leaves up, presumably at no small effort, daily, to dump the leaves on OP’s drive. They are not a frail couple worrying about falling. At least not worried enough to retain from a pre-dawn dressing gown clad leaf strike 🙄

Wet leaves can be very slippery. Perhaps the elderly couple are afraid of falling and breaking a hip.

@Libraview @Figgerty OP tried talking to them today and it went very badly. Which you would know if you'd read all her updates.

I would be opening the bags back on my drive to blow over 😂

I’m afraid I haven’t read every post on this thread ( apologies) - but I’m wondering about the folk who actually own this tree? Does anybody know anything about the actual tree owners??? Are they, in any way, involved in this? It is actually, their tree that’s causing all this trouble 🤦🏼‍♀️! Just saying…!

Tip the leaves out of the bag near the gap in your fence and take the empty bag back to them. Tell them that according to your security camera they dumped it on your property. Repeat ad infinitum.

Bonkers neighbours!