Inconvenient truths for the stupid person in charge of the HOA.

[Kogarashi]

She's just too stupid to realize she's already lost whatever battle she thought she was fighting.

Geeze, your yard IS gorgeous!

What Dips said, on both counts.

[Cazzi]

HOA woman seriously needs her eyes testing... NOW!

That is one hell of a gorgeous garden

[Der Cute]

I love those colors!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Thank you, folks! I got a freebie this year, we didn't have much of a winter, so everything got a head start. Not a whole lot of winter damage or mess. A little trimming, a little weeding, throw a little Miracle Gro on a few things, and boom. Already we got this going on here.

The colors change throughout the year. Got a lot of cherry-red and blue in the summer. By the time Halloween rolls around, everything's orange and yellow.

Went out and bought a lot of red and white and lime-green just this morning.

Dumbshit probably takes exception to the fact that I let my little kid paint my flowerpots. That, and I have a fondness for heavily weathered terra cotta.

[Kanalah]

RK, as someone who has no green thumb whatsoever...

oh my gosh I want you to make my house not look all stupid.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I'm essentially a pretty lazy gardener. Choose plants that do well in your climate without too much fuss. That's pretty much the trick. Because when you throw a plant wherever you can dig a hole, you're spread pretty thin as far as maintenance goes. I don't own any high maintenance plants. The most babying I do is throw my coffee grinds into those azaleas you're looking at every morning to counteract the alkalinity from the house foundation. That, and trim the hell out that variegated ivy you see there so it doesn't rip the molding off my house. Which it will do if I don't stay on top of it. Evidently, at this point last fall, I really needed to trim it, it's messy.

But it's pretty, though. Worth it. Everyone told me not to grow it up the side of my house on the bricks. I did it anyways, and now everyone has Ivy Envy when they come over here and see this glorious, wild wall of greenery.

Anyways, while I'm showing off my shabby, shitty, slum-like eyesore of a yard, Here's a similar shot I took last October. I think it's fun to see how my gardens change season to season, so sometimes I take pics when different stuff blooms. Here, the azaleas are not in bloom, but the mums are going crazy. And I can see that the lemon cypress (one of my favorite things...it's the little lime-green "Christmas tree" in the blue pot) has gotten larger since last fall.

I have discovered that dumbass does not like my bottle tree (not shown). Given her behavior, she's probably afraid of becoming trapped in it.

[LillFilly]

I LOVE your garden! I also like those low-maintenance vines, things that grow from bulbs like iris', etc. And freebies. I dig-up patches of ground cover that grow where I work and let it fill-in at my house. I want to try the moss growing thing too.

I think HOA is seriously jealous about your flowers. Or thinks that every plant should be 1-flower per pot in order of tallest to shortest in only pastel colors.

[Andara Bledin]

Bottle tree, or bottle brush tree?

I was attacked by a bottle brush tree as a kid and ever since then, I give them quite a wide berth. o.0

^-.-^

[XCashier]

RK, your garden is exquisite! You must get lots of hummingbirds and butterflies with all those beautiful flowers. When we get a house, I hope to have as beautiful a yard as yours.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yeah, I totally want to try the moss growing thing, too. I have a shade garden in the back that might be a good place to try that.

HOA's yard is nice, but it's extremely spare. She's got some nice plants, and they are neat and tidy and stay very obediently where she put them and they have plenty of room to themselves. A wide expanse of grass, edged in neat borders of perfectly lined-up border plants.

In other words, her tastes in what makes a pretty yard are vastly different than mine." I prefer riotous color and curvy lines and sweeping shapes. I like surprises and whimsey. IShe likes order and neatness and straight lines. However, unlike her, I don't see "different" as "wrong.

I doubt she's jealous of my flowers. I think she's let herself get so bitter over the years she's lost the ability to see them. And I say that with quite a bit of pity.

I mean a bottle tree. I have a small one of about half a dozen cobalt blue bottles on it tucked into that hedge further down. It's only about four foot high and it's easy to miss if you don't know it's there, because it's one of my "surprise" items that's hidden in my garden (my garden is filled with all sorts of things you can't see right off. Grotesques, colorful mushrooms made of glazed pottery a friend made for me, "mermaid stones" (water-colored glass marbles). Fun stuff you have to look for to see. So it's not like there's this weird, eerie-ass piece of folk art standing in the middle of my front yard (and even if it was, there's no rule against it). It's tucked between an oleander bush and a "banana" shrub that happens to be blooming right now...which means instead of seeing a beautiful emerald bush with yellow flowers on it and smelling like bananas and vanilla, and instead of seeing a whimsical surprise full of blue glass and sunlight, she saw a bunch of empty wine bottles that needed to go in the trash can. If that's not worth some pity right there, I don't know what is.

She's like gollum. You'd punch her lights out if she wasn't so fucking pathetic.

RK, your garden is exquisite! You must get lots of hummingbirds and butterflies with all those beautiful flowers. When we get a house, I hope to have as beautiful a yard as yours.

Thank you! I do get lots of both. I have some butterfly bushes, and I have learned that there is a very good reason they are named that!

[dragon_wings]

Wow! I'm not very outdoorsy but I can appreciate a beautiful garden or landscape. And damn. I love the colors. *sighs happily*

[Sapphire Silk]

Which is precisely why I want to be sure that any house I buy in the future does NOT have an HOA attached. They are more trouble than they're worth.

Amen to that. I'm not in one, but my shithead neighbors ARE. My house is in an older but quaint neighborhood where every house is different, lots of trees, bushes and color but on the border of a new neighborhood with cookie cutter houses with bad vinyl siding jobs, no trees and ugly, ugly, ugly.

Are there any authorities overseeing the actions of HOAs, or are they merely civil?

Rapscallion

It's strictly civil, but if it's a strict HOA, then they can levy fines. If you refuse to pay, they can foreclose on your house. I bought the house I did in part because there is no HOA.

It's not one of these big formal deals. I never even signed anything buying the house. There are papers, but to my knowledge, nobody's using them to bully anyone. .

Be very careful about this. CCR's often transfer along with the deed for a certain period of time, regardless of whether you sign for them or not.

Usually they are no longer enforceable after a specific period of time (twenty years or so) or if the HOA becomes defunct.

Love your yard, Kinkoid. Gorgeous. I'm like you; lazy about gardening. I'm happy if I can just keep the grass mowed. I did plant a couple of cedars in my side yard with the hope that eventually they will grow large enough to block sight of an ugly shed in my neighbor's yard.

[Seraph]

It's strictly civil, but if it's a strict HOA, then they can levy fines. If you refuse to pay, they can foreclose on your house. I bought the house I did in part because there is no HOA.

This.

I have a very distinct and clear memory of my friend's father blowing a gasket and literally going after the HOA rep when they were fined $1,000 for leaving their garage door open halfway, after 8 pm.

[LillFilly]

This HOA stuff reminds me of when my dad was the president of the HOA at our condo; brand-new building where the HOA was formed to choose and oversee maintenance, landscaping, etc. In truth, dad was the ONLY thing standing between the tenants and a feudal society! The other HOA members wanted to dictate what colors you could paint your walls (these were condos you OWNED and that you had even chosen the layout and flooring of!), whether or not renters should have the same 'rights' as owners such as, could they own dogs, or should the dogs be animals not over a certain size; could you have children there, etc.. There were some real busy-bodies in that group that wanted the place run like a retirement community! A year or so later, the other members of the HOA wanted dad to step down as president (he kept thwarting them, was keeping the cost of dues down,chose the better maintenance companies rather than cheapest). He did so graciously, watched the HOA dissolve into anarchy, then became president again when other members of the HOA and most of the building BEGGED him to! He's stepped-down for good now, but the board still comes to him for advice instead of the new president.

You know what's funny? The tenants who messed things up, then bitched to the HOA about it being broken. This one owner fancied himself an electrician and tried to rewire the parking gate that was malfunctioning, but was new and still under warranty and was scheduled to be fixed. However, his meddling made the problem worse and voided the warranty! But noooo, the gate company was the bad guy!

Oh hey, does anyone know what those ornamental trees that droop like weeping willows are? Umbrella trees I think they're called, but they get about 6 feet tall and have flowers in the spring?

[Seraph]

Oh hey, does anyone know what those ornamental trees that droop like weeping willows are? Umbrella trees I think they're called, but they get about 6 feet tall and have flowers in the spring?

I think so, my neighbors have one, poor thing had JUST flowered when we got the severe hailstorm. Now its bare again. :|

I'll ask them if I see them anytime soon, they're pretty nonexistent though. <.<

Edit: They have a Weeping Cherry tree.

http://www.landscapinggallery.info/w...erry-Tree3.gif