When Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, was tackled by a neighbor while riding his lawn mower this month, the initial assumption was that it was about politics. Not necessarily. It was more likely about yard waste, the developer of the gated community where the neighbors live told The Louisville Courier-Journal.

“This has been festering for years,” he said. His best guess was that Senator Paul, a libertarian and believer in property rights, provoked the incident by blowing lawn trimmings from his yard into that of his alleged assailant, Rene Boucher. Errant tree branches may have also been at the root of things — with no pun intended.

Of course, in this don’t-tread-on-me society, landscaping disputes between neighbors are as common as dandelions. Too much fertilizer, too little grass-cutting and new trees blocking sunlight can all light a fuse. Even too many vines growing on the wrong side of a fence can offend. Not to mention noise, which may have attributed to the attack on the senator, given his frequent mower riding. In 2015, he told Us Weekly that he found it therapeutic.

In my years as a weekend homeowner on Long Island, I’ve alienated a beloved neighbor on one side by having her yew tree trimmed to keep it from covering my chimney. She had agreed to it, but the man we hired lopped off too much.