Imagine living next to a neighbor who seems to complain about every single thing you do on your property. If you finally decided to sell your home and move away, would you simply be happy to leave this neighbor behind, or would you want to get some revenge?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he decides to get revenge by leaving two “presents” for his neighbor.

Trust me. These aren’t anything the neighbor will want, but he certainly won’t be able to get rid of either one very easily.

Let’s read all about it.

Mt driveway is messy? Yours will never be the same. And you walkway, and your utilities, and your foundation….

We used to live in a newly upscale hill community.

Apparently old hippies get possessive when they find that their hillside shack is suddenly worth 20x what they paid.

It was usually enough to fund a comfortable retirement through reverse mortgages and the like.

This neighbor sounds really annoying.

From the first day we moved in, our older downslope neighbor was really mad about the state of our walkways.

“Get that resurfaced! Those cracks are going to erode and shower dirt down onto my driveway! And put in a proper concrete walkway, not those cheap paving stones!”

I tried to be polite, but he was just full of orders on how we should make his life better/easier/prettier.

His comments about our taste, our lack of compliance, and other “kids these days” rants weren’t ever about his own place, only criticizing ours.

It’s quite a long list of complaints.

It was unending:

too many plants

too many invasive plants

too many poisonous plants (somehow they all were poisonous?)

But he complained about more than just plants.

too much mulch

too many repairs

too much new paint

The list continues…

what good will swaling the yard do

not enough expensive concrete

not enough herbicides/pesticides/whatever other nasty sprays he like to kill things with.

Here’s some more context about the neighbor’s property.

The space between our property and his was our paving stone walkway on dirt, a 2′ wood retaining wall, and then his poured walkway.

His yard was mowed, sprayed, and beaten into concession: all bare dirt, nothing planted to hold soil. It had been so long since his soil was protected that there were visible erosion runnels.

No wonder he was worried about erosion: he was building new rivers across his property.

How annoying!

In a few years, he’d escalated to threatening to call the authorities on us.

We had code enforcement out twice in a month for “wasting water” until they refused to make any more special trips.

He kept calling different city departments to check up on our plans or report us for anything possible.

Twice we got a permit for small repairs.

He even flat out lied.

He called every day to try to get us in trouble.

He even lied about an unpermitted pool to the authorities, who got there and just sighed, toured the (unexcavated) backyard yet again, and left.

He was always yelling about something out a window every time he saw us.

It got so bad that I had to sneak out to garden.

They were eager to sell.

So when the market got markedly better, we put the house on the market.

It sold just at the beginning of our rainy season.

Two days before we moved, I left him two going-away presents.

Here’s the first “present.”

I bought dried blackberries and mixed them with birdseed. Then I cast it across his backyard. For two days.

Blackberries will find a way to grow even in the worst, most oversprayed, sterile soil.

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As birds eat, they leave droppings. So in a few hours the birds were depositing loads of blackberries in nutrient-rich guano everywhere on his property.

Now, we had mulch down between established plants, so no new plants on our side, but awful neighbor quickly had a bramble patch. Some of those thorn canes can get bigger than your thumb, and underground crowns bigger than your fist.

Here’s the second “present.”

Running bamboo will wedge into every crack available, buckling walkways and growing underground in surprising directions.

It created a delightful privacy fence the new owners loved, and didn’t bother our solid foundation or paving stones at all.

When it popped up in his yard, it had spread seven feet out into his territory and busted up every one of his walkways.

I don’t think his foundation was very solid… he was apparently complaining that he found bamboo growing inside his basement for years afterwards.

I’m just glad I got the opportunity to help my neighbor with his erosion problem. 😀

Wow! That’s some serious revenge! You don’t mess with bamboo. Interesting about the blackberry plants too.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person thinks the neighbor got what he deserved.

A landscaper weighs in.

This person learned something.

But this person thinks OP went too far.

Bamboo seriously is some intense revenge. Finding it in his basement is crazy. I feel bad for the neighbor a teeny tiny bit, but overall, he deserved what he got.

At least the new homeowners aren’t suffering from the blackberries or the bamboo.

He messed with the wrong neighbor!