Dear Queenie,
I live next door to people who smoke all the time. They sit on their veranda or stand in the yard smoking and toss their cigarette butts onto my driveway and into my yard.
It’s very annoying to have to pick up someone else’s trash that they could just as easily have thrown down on their own yard or even into a trash can, but I can’t just leave the butts there for my small children and our pets to find and maybe chew on.
Queenie, I don’t want to start a fight with my neighbors, but maybe I should talk to them about this. What do you say?—Smoking mad
Dear Smoking mad,
If you can put up a fairly high fence or plant a hedge between your yard and your neighbours’ property, do so. If they complain, explain that it is to keep your small children safely enclosed. No need to get into the subject of the discarded butts unless they start throwing them over the fence/hedge, in which case you will know they are deliberately messing up your yard, which is a whole other problem.
