On 4/4/2009 3:46 PM, Dioclese wrote:
My rural neighborhood is more or less city-fied. They all got pasture type
fencing including the street-facing side. All is well manicured native
grasses as viewed from the street on these 5/10/20 acre plats. No native
spring flowers, they're all mowed down. No, these native flowers and their
originating plants are not in competition with native grasses. I delight
when I arrive at home to see spring alive, these white and ultra-yellow
flowers will wilt soon enough. Soon to see summer, and most, if not all of
it, will wilt and dry again in the Texas sun. I kept my fenceline around my
house, not my property line. I don't understand my neighbors, help me out.

Try living in a tract with a mandatory owners' association. Under the
CC&Rs (conditions, covenants, and restrictions) recorded on the
individual lots in the tract when the land was subdivided, the
association's architectural review committee might have more authority
than any government planning or zoning commission.

Fortunately, I don't live such a tract; but there are several very near.
In one, you can't plant a deciduous tree -- even in your back yard --
because the leaves might blow into a neighbor's swimming pool. You
can't leave your garage door open while working in your garden. And you
can't have any play equipment (e.g., swings) in your back yard if it
extends higher than the wall (not fence) around your property.

The restriction on trees is paradoxical. In the common areas of the
tract (owned by the association), there are valley white oaks (Quercus
lobata), which are deciduous and drop bushels of leaves. The
association cannot remove these trees because they were growing in the
tract before it was developed and are thus protected by county
ordinance. That's right: The association effectively owns -- and must
maintain -- trees that the association prohibits any individual
homeowner from planting.

Some of my neighbors would like to impose such an association on my
tract. They don't like the colors of some houses. They don't like the
drought-tolerant landscaping in some front yards. They don't like the
fact that I mulch my front lawn -- pink clover (Persicaria capitata)
instead of grass -- in the late fall with leaves from my valley white
oak and "evergreen" ash (not really evergreen). Fortunately, they can't
impose an association on me without my approval because it requires
recording CCRs on my lot, which they can't do.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening diary at http://www.rossde.com/garden/diary