Good fences make good neighbors. Words of wisdom by Robert Frost. Words I can live by.

My neighbors who complained about me not mowing my lawn until Memorial Day also complained to me when the fence between our properties was blown over by intense winds. It was an old wooden fence and the posts rotted at the base from the moisture. Well, her husband put the fence in my yard. They insisted it was my fence, but I didn’t know because the fence was already there when I bought the house.

So I took the fence apart and slowly threw it away with the weekly garbage. The wood was rotted beyond repair. Since I didn’t have any small children or pets, I didn’t think I needed to replace the fence between our yards.

But my neighbor would sneak up behind me while I was doing yardwork to insist that we get a new fence. I really couldn’t afford a new fence and I told her. But she insisted that we had to get a new fence and we would each pay for half of it. I said I wanted a three-foot chain-link fence because it would last longer than a wooden fence.

I had a red cedar wooden fence at my old house and the wind blew it over after about five years. What a shame that I had replaced the thirty-year-old chain-link fence with a wooden one that didn’t even last five years! I insisted on a chain-link fence, because the chain-link fence at my childhood home was still standing after all these years.

But my neighbor ordered a six-foot wooden fence for privacy. And I was supposed to pay for half. I reluctantly agreed, but when I contacted the contractor to pay for half of the fence, he told me that the neighbors had already paid in full. I just didn’t understand. They only paid for half of the fence, so only half of the fence was installed. I would be responsible for installing the rest of the fence.

Normally, I don’t get that involved with my neighbors. If my house would have come with a good fence, I could have avoided dealing with my neighbors on this issue.