Circle of life

I think that all things in life come back to Seinfeld. Or beer. Heather and I are currently at odds with our HOA. Now...I never had an HOA before moving here but I actually like the idea. If done correctly, it can keep your neighbors from piling up their crap out front and making your property look like hell. However, if not done properly, it can be quite annoying. $140 a month gets my driveway plowed (which I never worried about with the Jeep but now with the Van it's been nice), my house re-stained, deck painted, any outside repairs (including roof) taken care of, and.....lawn work (to include landscaping). This is where the problem lies. This is a shot of a retaining wall on one side of the house. It was probably built with the trees that were cut down to make room for the house and now they are rotted out and worthless. We were supposed to have this rebuilt with stone a year ago. It looks terrible and we're getting ready to write a formal letter of complaint and request to have it fixed. There are HOA meetings each month and we are going to start going to them. I'm thinking of running for President of the HOA. Like Morty Seinfeld did down in Del Boca Vista. I'll call it Greenway Court....phase 2.


Here's a shot of our hosue and my neighbor's house. There is a retaining wall on both sides of our houses and one in teh middle of them and they are all in a state of disaster. To make matter's worse...a guy up the street (who I really like) kicked his wall down and they replaced it. He just moved in last year. I'm thinking about putting on some boots and doing some night work. You can also see the lovely lawn. It get's mowed approximately 2x a year. It's knee deep right now but they wont mow it for a while. For some reason, our lawn is solid weeds and the other homes all have wild grass which looks really nice. Ideally, I'd like to have wild grass and wild flowers. However, we're not allowed to make any modifications to the outside of the house (lawn, lights, wind chimes, etc. unless approved by the HOA). I have a problem with this.


This is what we decided to do yesterday. Now personally...I think that having a killer van in the driveway does nothing but add serious curb value but Heather wanted more.


Almost done.

It turned out nicely and now I'm waiting for the phone to ring. It'll be the HOA yelling at us for making changes.

My immediate neighbor's son in-law is a landscaper so he's gonna come over and help me identify what the various plants are in my yard and then let me know what I need to do in order to have it look a bit better. I'm not gonna allow the HOA to touch my lawn anymore. They come in and mow all the flowers down and then they don't even come back to clean up any of the clippings. Let Phase 2 begin.