Perpetual Ruminations

Why? (A Rant)

I will apologize in advance for my following rant: Sorry, I just want to get this out, and who knows perhaps someone has a solution that doesn't risk incarceration blow-back.

With the warm weather, our snow is melting fast and has resulted in quite a lot of mud in the driveway. Of course, there are large snowbanks that are still melting and creating even more mud.

My solution to this was to dig out a few trenches for the water to flow away from the driveway, rake and shovel some of the surface to get all the water to flow off the driveway, and then let it dry out some. Once it was dried out, I drove back and forth over the surface to pack it down and create a solid surface that would allow rain to run off instead of letting it soak in. It worked great.

Except, our neighbor kind of messed it all up. He's a nice enough fellow and means well, but he is also one of these people who does what he thinks is best. He thought it would be good to plow down the remaining snowbanks. It was a good idea, but it would have been nice if he decided this before I put in multiple days of work on the driveway. In the process of plowing, he created more ruts, totally destroyed my trenching, and spread snow all over the drive creating more mud.

After he was done, I redid my work on the driveway, re-dug my trenching, and re-packed the surface. I was ready for the rain predicted for the weekend. I also helped him work on his boiler Saturday and took that time to inform him that I had packed the drive and asked him not to run the drag over it and loosen it all up because it creates more mud. Knowing that he likes to drive the 4-wheeler around with the drag just for something to do, I also told him that I would let him know when we wanted him to drag our side. (I should add that last summer/fall, he would drag both his side and ours daily, sometimes even twice a day. Anytime it rained we had mud and when it was dry, our vehicles were covered in gritty dust.)

Yesterday, he decided to push the knocked-down snowbanks around a bit more and messed up my trenching, then hooked onto the drag and raked it over the entire driveway. Before I could do any repair work it began to rain harder and without the trenching, the water flowed onto the now soft and worked-up driveway creating a lot of mud. Last night the rain turned to snow, so when this melts, it's going to sit on top of the driveway and soak in even more. It's going to take a week or more to get it dried up again, and I'll have to dig trenches, shovel, and rake the damn thing all over again.

I thought by asking him nicely, he would stay off our side, but I should have known he would do it even more because I told him a packed driveway would stay drier and he commented that dragging it and having it soft would let the water soak in instead of sitting on top.

He's like that; whatever someone else tells him, he will argue and do the opposite. I just wish I knew how or what to do to counteract this.