After moving into a new home, a mother and son spent their weekend sprucing up the yard. But just days later, their neighbor went out of his way to mow down the entire thing.
The mother posted about the incident on Reddit and wrote, "Am I the a******? My neighbor chopped all of my freshly planted berries and flowers."
She explained that her son, who's only 8 years old, had chosen several berry plants that they had installed. She noted that her neighbor had witnessed them gardening and that the beds were clearly marked.
"I marked [the strawberries] with the big paper that came with the bulbs and stuck it into the ground so I knew where I planted each plant. Clearly visible," she wrote. Yet when she caught her neighbor mowing them down early one morning, he denied having seen them.
Instead, she reported, he began yelling at her, venting that she wasn't accepting his "help" and that she was being rude.
"My poor son was almost in tears when he found out," she wrote.
Commenters immediately agreed that she was not, in fact, the a****** of the situation.
"Dude was destroying your hard work on your property," one person wrote.
Another echoed the sentiment, saying, "It doesn't even matter if you were straight up growing weeds, it was not his property. … This dude clearly respects no boundaries, personal OR property wise."
Several suggested that she install cameras to prevent future incidents. One commenter advised, "Contact the police, get a police report for small claims court. He was trespassing on your property and caused damage to it."
And while this type of behavior would be unimaginable for most people, it's hardly the first time somebody has taken to Reddit seeking advice on a neighborly dispute. People have witnessed their neighbors (and their HOAs) spraying unwanted chemical pesticides, chopping down trees, and even ripping up gardens from their roots.
"He probably personally disliked the appearance of the plants, and decided he would just chop them down in order to please himself," one person mused. "Some people just don't like any Landscaping at all. They'd rather everything be bare and austere because they think it looks tidier."
For anyone who knows about gardening, however, it's well-known that grass monocultures are actually harmful to ecosystems — and rewilding with native plants instead helps ecosystems to thrive.
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