August 11, 2006

Green Acres, my butt

There’s nothing like a Home Owner’s Association meeting to make you want to sell your house, and move to the middle of a field somewhere with at least 10 miles to the front, back and either side of you. We’ve got some issues people. We’ve got some issues.

My husband dreads the meetings that happen twice a year. He dreads them because he knows that I will be full of tirades for the next several days, possibly weeks. He knows I’ll be bringing up meetings from the past, reading into people’s comments and making myself and therefore him utterly miserable for days. It always happens. It’s inevitable.

Let me start by saying that we have a beautiful back yard. The previous owner hired someone to plant a perennial garden and it is gorgeous. It is set up so one thing blooms and as that plant goes dormant the next one stands up to take the stage. We have butterfly bushes, astilbee plants, lavendar, oregano, black-eyed susans, clematis and that just names a few of our gardens residents.

What we also have occassionally is trash and creeping weedy vines because our neighbor to the one side does not take care of her yard at all, as in: likes the look of foot high weeds, prefers dumping trash items onto her pathetic excuse for a patio, believes old newspapers in the backyard left in stacks two feet high make great fertilizer (For what? The weeds?), and acts completely clueless as to how any of this could bother anyone. It’s annoying.

So after his initial rant about the shape of her yard, our 80-something year old treasurer who has too much time on his hands and therefore has appointed himself Inspector General of all things yard, makes a remark about our garden being "overgrown." My husband glared and refused to nod in acknowledgement. I huffed, and worked my eyes into evil slits of terror and sat there stewing. The only comments we have ever heard about our garden is that it is beautiful. And it is.

Our garden is NOT overgrown. Sure, our burning bushes may be getting large, but we like them that way because they block the view of the mess that is next door. Our neighbor on the other side begs us not to trim back our butterfly bush because it cascades onto their yard so beautifully and provides at least three butterflies to watch at any given time. We have never heard a complaint.

So, I arrive home and go out to inspect my garden. I pulled a couple weeds and while out there another neighbor comes down to "talk". I asked her to please point out exactly what about my garden is so offensive and she makes lots of passive/aggressive statements about "not having time when you have two young kids," etc. These are the type of people who trim all their bushes into little balls. We are not those people. This is the view from my patio.

It’s beautiful, is it not? I should warn you here that the answer I’m looking for is, "Yes BBM, your garden is beautiful. No, no. It’s not overgrown at all." Something like an adapted "Mary Mary, Quite Contrary" as in:

Black Belt Mama, no need for drama
How does your garden grow?
With astilbee and oregano
And neighbors who mind their OWN (business, that is.)

So as I’m standing there, with a handful of weeds, minding my own (business that is), another one of my neighbor’s dogs comes CHARGING out of NOWHERE and jumps on me, then my husband (who is holding Lil C), then my neighbor, and then her husband.

I am NOT a dog person. I am especially not a dog person when the dog happens to be a full grown full breed German Shepard. I am really not a dog person when this German Shepard is one and the same German Shepard who knocked down Big I while sledding in the winter and jumped all over her as I watched and screamed with horror from the top floor of my house while holding Lil C, imagining that the dog was eating her face.

The dog wasn’t eating her face, THANK GOD. It was instead "playing" with her or so it’s owner said. It knocked her down and jumped all over her as she lay in the snow unable to get up, kicking, screaming, and crying as my husband ran towards her and eventually got the dog away from her. It was terrifying.

We have leash laws in these parts and I think that all dog owners should take them seriously. If you want to have a dog and let it run all over your yard that’s fine, but you damn well better have a fence or a tie-up. If you don’t, then you better be living in the place I described in the first paragraph. Close quarters do not make for happy neighbors when there are unleashed dogs. I should have reported her then. I didn’t because I try to be nice like that.

A few weeks ago when there were two dogs in my yard, I didn’t do anything then either. The girls were not outside at the time. The dogs did not jump up on my husband. They made a drive by, so to speak and left.

Tonight was different.

The dog’s owner only came to retrieve her dog when she heard my husband yelling, "DOWN," at the top of his lungs as he stood there shielding Lil C from the huge paws and hoping to block the dog from jumping on Big I and her friend who were hanging out behind him on the patio. I stood there shaking, absolutely livid, wanting to tell her off in the worst way. She called her dog and never offered a single word of apology.

It is ON.

As soon as the girls were in bed, I fired off a complaint to the township. She will get a letter informing her of the ordinance she knows she’s breaking and warning her that if reported again she will be subject to a fine and/or jail time. This is not a minor issue or irritation. If Big I had been jumped up on the way I was, she would have been on the ground. I don’t care what kind of dog it is or how well it’s trained. . . any dog can be a threat, especially to children, at any time. What if Lil C had been on the ground? The thought of it makes me absolutely sick.

I will have made an enemy I’m sure, but I have no problem with that. I’m not the one breaking the law. My husband told this neighbor about having the dog on a leash back when the sledding incident occurred. We gave them a chance when they didn’t deserve one. We’re done.

My Mom called and I told her about my issues. She told me I need to move. I don’t need to move. All I need is for people to mind their own business and take some responsibility for their property and their animals. Is that really too much to ask?

Edited to add: Because I am a take action kind of person and because I do have "nice" coarsing through my veins on occasion, I went out to my neighbor’s weedy overgrown patio and yard while she was gone and got busy. I pulled every single weed, threw out trash (including a piece of cardboard where a mouse was obviously taking up residence. When I did this I didn’t even go into a convulsive "Oh MY GOD, THERE’S A MOUSE IN THE VICINITY" freak out that I would normally do, complete with screaming. I just threw it out). I even set up her kid’s play house and picnic table that was strew about and uninhabitable.

She came home to find me cleaning up her yard, and helped me finish up. I told her I was doing it to get the yard Inspector General off both of our cases (notice that bonding innuendo there just in case she was ticked that I took over her yard. . . it worked). I then told her that if she comes up with a budget, we’ll help her with a plan and do some patio reworking/landscaping to make it a little nicer for everyone. She was grateful and agreed. She also told me that the reason she didn’t go out there and clean it up herself is because there was a rather large snake taking up residence. It is SO GOOD I did not know that when I went out there armed with trash bags and determination to clean it up.

I tried to put myself in her shoes: a busy single woman with a child to take care of. . . if I were in her shoes I probably wouldn’t be concerned with weeds either. My payment for all my hard work was a couple bug bites and dinner provided for me and family by my neighbor. The best reward of all though is not seeing the eye-sore that was her yard, and knowing that I am one hell of a weeder!

The latest Birth Story is up and it’s a good one! Lydia tells the story of her daughter’s birth and it involves trolls with saws and lots of screaming. You don’t want to miss it!