Tension convention

Idea....

If she starts to "do" stuff in your yard again, snipping here, maybe cutting branches there ....even if they are going OVER her fence..

Approach her with a financial statement about it.

Just as an example-
Lets say tomorrow you wake up and see again, mulch and with in 2 days you can see she has used weed-b-gone.

Write out a quick note saying ' Thank you for mulch and care.. blah blah blah. I know the Mulch had to have cost at least 10.00 a bag It looks like you used two! Wonderful I think i owe you 20 bucks. I noticed though that you cut back my ( what ever ) vine . That bulb cost me 10.00. I also see you sprayed my ( a, b and c plant) They have died. I got those at Home depot for 6.00 , the other was 12.00 and the last was in a pack of 3 for 6.00.
I do thank you for helping when you think I should be helped, but I would like my 10.00 now so I can fix my yard again since you have cost me some plants"

or something along those lines..
Maybe something a bit more defined and not necessarily ABOUT boundaries, but a totally different perspective might help her back off.

Me, I'd be at the city attorney.

two words...

super soaker.

I know you are fierce, shewolf, but I'd be all over this.

I'd be going over there and saying, "I didn't ask you to look after my yard 5 years ago, I disagree with your gardening style, this is my yard and you have your own, so leave my plants alone!"

I have a neighbour who is weird. She used to shovel our walk way (no idea why) until about a year ago when she suddenly stopped. She goes hot and cold. We've had long chats about gardening and exchanging plants, she praised me to the skies for redoing our deck and fencing and putting in a garden (into what was a sadly neglected yard), redoing our gutters and windows, etc etc but when I asked her to our party and wedding, she said yes, then when I went to confirm, she said no. When we went on our honeymoon she fed our cat for us and brought in our mail, so I bought her some golf things from Harrods (she's a big golfer) and barely got a thank you. When I was up north working for 2 weeks (this month), I gave her a gift card to Chapter's. Again, barely acknowledged. I asked her for her phone number and she said, 'What for?' Um, because you look after our cat and I might need to call you. She said, "I live right next door." Uh... we're not talking about when I'm here. Anyway, I am not going to ask her to feed the cat again - I'll just pay for a cat-sitter.

Honestly , if it were me, I would not have been passive.
But, thats not what soz needed to hear from people.

But Im with you.
Trespassing would have been the least.
Property damage

Next time she does some uninvited gardening and you see her in her yard, fire up your hedge trimmer and yell over the fence to her that you'll soon be returning her generosity by doing some pruning in her garden. Make sure you have a huge, grateful smile on your face at the time.

I know it's confusing when old threads are revived, but just to clarify, how I handled it DID work for 5+ years. I managed to resolve the situation without making an enemy out of her (which is the trickiest part, I don't mind making enemies when need be but I don't want an enemy next door if that can possibly be avoided).

She then had a ~2-day relapse that was nipped in the bud, no recurrence.

So at this point it's really pretty much resolved. Might UN-resolve of course, then will deal with it again as necessary.

If the un-resolution keeps happening (as opposed to being a once every five years or so occurrence), then I'll have to ramp things up.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't read the whole thing. Thought she was back at it with some grass of yours Not THAT kind of grass, of course.

my original suggestion was to spray HER with weed-b-gone.

That is a fairly lame idea. Very teen.

The whole question here is re whether you can fool with a neighbor's property. This post question is interesting on some points, re that property affecting yours, but not on this one, as Soz' neighbor is multiply out to lunch.

i was not saying it seriously
i was just being silly

Woops, I get that, backs off.

In that case, I'd hire a crew re her yard.
I suppose that would be too obvious.

Ha, that kind of grass might do her some good. She could stand to chill a bit.

Edit: by the way there is some of that same hot and coldness too. I've mostly vented here but part of why I'm willing to put any effort in is that occasionally she's really nice. I love her dog, who is lovely but oddly catlike in her attentions -- she will put up with some people, flat-out doesn't like others, and likes very few. The dog likes me a lot, comes running up happily whenever she sees me, and my neighbor often says nice things about that.

She also will say random really nice things about me, what a nice person I am or what a great job I've done with _____ or how creative I am, that sort of thing.

I think there is some element of she really does want to be friends but just doesn't quite know how to go about it, and is put out that her early overtures (which I didn't realize were so rare for her and probably took a lot of effort on her part) didn't really bear much fruit.