wrote in message
oups.com...


Vox Humana wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


Indeed, had the government appeared at
the hearing, one of my tactics would have
been to ask if the inspector lived
anywhere nearby, after establishing
that there was no citizen complainant.


I don't follow that logic. Does the code state that a citizen complaint
is
required to initiate an investigation? Does your code enforcement
agency
accept anonymous complaints? The problem with enforcement of such codes
is
that they generally lack an objective standard. Therefore, the

That's the point. My tactic would have been to
show that the inspector was basing his evaluation
on his own tastes. The odds are that they
would be along the lines of what that webcam showed
that was offered in one of the followups, i.e.
crewcut lawns, trees, and little else.

But first, I would want to establish that there
was no citizen complainant. The reason is that
the good will of my neighbors means more to me
than freedom to manage my property according
to my own esthetic standards.

If there was a complaint from a neighbor, I would
have stated the importance of my neighbors' good
will toward me and asked the adjudicator to grant
a continuance pending my talking to the neighbor
and offering to accomodate him. If there was a
privacy issue, I would have asked the adjudicator
to direct the inspector to get in touch with
the complainant and ask for permission to make
known his identity. By proposing to settle
directly with the complainant I would have indicated
my genuine desire for a just outcome and that,
after all, is what the adjudicator is paid to
achieve.

If there was _no_ complainant, then I would be
free to use my questioning of the inspector to
show that it was a matter of his taste, ultimately.
Because, as you said, weed laws are typically
vague. For example, some of the ordnances use the word
"cultivate" in a way that weakens them, legally speaking.
If they prohibit "uncultivated" vegetation, it's
a simple matter to show that one of the
dictionary definitions of cultivate is simply
to "favor the growth of" a plant. Then I can
correctly state that my yard is cultivated
because I remove tree saplings, poison ivy,
etc. specifically to favor the growth of what's
left.

That's the legal issues. As for the esthetic
issue, whether I can call my yard natural
landscaping, I'll try to post a followup to
Ferret's reply to Vox Humana and confine
it to rec.gardens. I have 15 minutes left...
how do you folks post multiple times in
24 hours? Do you write faster than I -- or
not work for a living?

I'm not sure I agree that the absence of a citizen's complaint is a sign of
goodwill or acceptance from your neighbors. Sometimes it is better to live
next to a mess than to live next to a mess AND have a vengeful neighbor who
becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is really
bad or has violated some rule that can be objectively evaluated (i.e., put
up a shed or fence that violates some covenant or zoning ordinance) I try to
ignore it hoping the next neighbors have higher standards. To condone or
ignore is not acceptance.

wrote in message
oups.com...


Vox Humana wrote:
Nature flourishes in my landscape, but it wouldn't be seen as wild or
unkempt by any reasonable person. Ironically, a "natural" look probably
takes more thought and care than a rigid, formal design. Letting your
yard
become overgrown with weeds and calling it "natural" is like letting
your
kids run wild and celebrating their exuberance.

What defines the difference between "natural landscaping" and unkempt?
How do we know the difference between a Nieman-Marcus yard and a Costco
one? Do we have a gene for perceiving invasive species?...


I would say that it is akin to the discernment of pornography vs. art You
know it when you see it. The introduction of the terms "Nieman-Marcus and
"Costco" reinforce my suspicion that there is something far more emotional
about this than landscape design or plant selection. I don't think it has
anything much to do with money. As my mother used to say, "You don't have
to have money to be clean." In other words, you can spend virtually no
money and have a great landscape. Mowing and pulling weeds is almost free.
You can generally befriend other gardeners and get divisions of perennials
for free. Starting plants from seeds is very inexpensive. Propagating
shrubs from cutting is nearly free. Of course you do have to devote your
time and effort. But really, if you aren't putting some effort into your
landscape, you are a gardener, you merely coexist with the property.
Gardening is not passive.

I'm not saying that people who don't garden are bad, but as you see, there
are certain expectations placed on you based on your setting. When you live
in a city, there is a social contract and certain laws. You have the
advantage of pooling your resources with the neighbors and in return you get
fire, police, water, sewers, cultural opportunities and so on. In exchange,
people expect you to conform to a norm that includes, among other things, a
minimum level of yard maintenance. If you live in a planned unit
development, the requirements may be higher. In a rural area, there are
fewer common benefits and lower maintenance requirements.

I think the concept of "invasive species" is a red herring. While
introducing invasives has a strong negative environmental impact, it has
little to do with your particular situation. I suspect that if you had a
well maintained yard full of invasive plants it wouldn't be a code
violation. Again, gardening isn't passive. Since we aren't born with
gardening expertise, one has to do some research.

As for "natural" and "unkempt" - again, I think it hinges on the concept of
being purposeful and active as opposed to neglectful and passive. Perhaps
"natural" would better be express as "informal." All landscapes have
structure. There is a canopy of trees, a mid-ground of shrubs and tall
perennials, and a foreground of short perennials and ground cover. There is
thought put into sight lines, just as one would compose a picture. There is
consideration given to leaf size, shape, color, and texture. Function is
considered - is the yard used for sports or relaxation. The particulars of
plant selection and hardscape material depends on your location and can be
skewed to minimize, but not eliminate, maintenance.

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:32:47 -0700, BattMeals wrote:


a3.jpg shows part of a well-trimmed devil strip of the neighbor to the
right.

So, are you from Ohio? I used Google to look up the never-heard-before term "devil strip", and
found this:

http://www.word-detective.com/030600.html

Dear Word Detective: Recently, a friend said that she parked her car on the "devil strip" and
explained that this was the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Can you tell me what
the origin of this term is? (She's from Ohio) -- Wendy Klepfer, via the internet.

Oh, well, there's your answer. People in (and from) Ohio are just plain weird. (I'm allowed to say
that because I happen to live in Ohio at the moment.) Ohio boggles the mind. Our local county
sheriff just got himself indicted by a grand jury on 323 felony charges, but steadfastly refuses to
stop running for re-election. And there's a good chance that he'll win. I think there's something in
the water around here.

What people call that strip between the street and the sidewalk turns out to depend on where they
live. When I was growing up in Connecticut, we called it the "shoulder," but other terms heard
around the U.S. include "tree bank" (common in Massachusetts), " berm," "right of way," "green
strip" and the logical, if unglamorous, "dog walking area."

According to The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which pays close attention to such
local lingo, "devil strip" is heard almost exclusively in Northeastern Ohio, up around Akron. DARE
suggests that the term may arise from the strip's legal status as a sort of "no man's land" between
public and private property.

"Devil" occurs in many such folk terms, applied to plants, animals, places and things, usually those
considered dangerous or unattractive, and the sense of "devil" when found in place names is often
"barren, unproductive and unused." DARE notes a similar term "devil's lane," first appearing around
1872, meaning the unusable strip of land between two parallel fences, often the result of neighbors
being unable to agree on a common fence. And another term, "devil's footstep," dates back to around
1860 and means "a spot of barren ground." So it's not surprising that a strip of land next to the
street, unusable by anyone, would be christened the "devil strip." In fact, for Ohio, it's downright
logical.

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana" wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you didn't mean that most people move
about every twenty or thirty years?

"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you didn't
mean that most people move
about every twenty or thirty years?


Nope. Not where I live. I've been here going on 10 years and I can hardly
keep-up with the constant parade of people who move in and out of the
neighborhood. The development is about 15 years old, there are only 5
original owners on the street. Of the five, only two have remained
married, so technically the other houses have had a legal change in
ownership when they were transferred to one of the ex-spouses who
subsequently got remarried. I think that with cheap mortgages, people are
moving up to more expensive homes. Also, the neighborhood has a lot of
young couples who have expanding families. They tend to move here, have a
few kids, and then move to a larger home.

The frequency of moving seems to be strongly linked to demographics. Here
is an except from an interesting discussion
http://ecp3113-01.fa01.fsu.edu/livel.../Migration.htm
"The other oft-quoted statistic, the average number of years between moves,
can be calculated by dividing life expectancy (which was 74 years in 1982)
by the number of lifetime moves (10.5). The answer, 7.0, suggests that the
average American moves once every seven years. But there are enormous
individual differences in the propensity to move. Some individuals move
nearly every year, thereby inflating the mean; others rarely move."

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:57:57 GMT, "Vox Humana" wrote:


"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you didn't
mean that most people move
about every twenty or thirty years?


Nope. Not where I live. I've been here going on 10 years and I can hardly
keep-up with the constant parade of people who move in and out of the
neighborhood. The development is about 15 years old, there are only 5
original owners on the street. Of the five, only two have remained

Interesting. In my (very rural) area, the people who live around me now are mostly the people who
lived in those same houses 30 or 40 years ago.

Darren Garrison wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:57:57 GMT, "Vox Humana" wrote:


"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
. ..

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"

wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you didn't

mean that most people move

about every twenty or thirty years?


Nope. Not where I live. I've been here going on 10 years and I can hardly
keep-up with the constant parade of people who move in and out of the
neighborhood. The development is about 15 years old, there are only 5
original owners on the street. Of the five, only two have remained


Interesting. In my (very rural) area, the people who live around me now are mostly the people who
lived in those same houses 30 or 40 years ago.

In my own jurisdiction, Montgomery County Maryland, the average length
of residence is indeed about 7 years.

My family's been in the same house since 1963.

On "my block", I think there are maybe three families who have been here
more than 20 years, that's out of maybe 30 houses.

The demographic for the county, in general, is more upscale than my
"affordable" neighborhood. Yet as income and educational levels increase
in this county, the likelihood of frequent moves apparently rises.

The neighborhood demographic is changing. We used to be the sort of
neighborhood peopled by the successful owners of small businesses in the
services industries -- plumbers, electricians, etc -- and midlevel
government workers. That demographic is largely unchanged, but the
national origins of that demographic is now almost exclusively in
centralamerica although there are a fair number of asians, increasingly
from China.

Many of the asians don't seem to be very interested in landscaping or
gardening, and frequently allow their yards to become rather overgrown.
I suspect that this may be due to unfamiliarity with which plants are to
be cultivated and encourange, and which should be weeded out or cut
back. Hedges appear to be a complete mystery to many of them.

The centralamerican approach to gardening is generally to pave the lawn
and park a fleet of work vehicles.

The bloodsucking yuppies, on the other hand, either do a fairly good job
of hiring gardeners who have some slight clue, or replace the previous
home with a "teardown", which is when you gut or remove the previous
structure and replace it with a McMansion, meaning they fill the
property line-to-line with a ridiculously overpriced "cookie cutter" home.

Considering that they apparently can't tolerate sunlight, I'm not too
surprised that they don't do a damn thing with their yards other than
design them to be easily and conveniently trimmed by the centralamerican
cadres of lawncutters, and fill the inside of their homes (presumably,
they don't invite me in and I'd be afraid to go) with overpriced trendy
imported trinkets showcasing their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption
on overextended credit.



--
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may
often assume the appearance, and produce the effects,
of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.
--Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
================================================== ================
"Sometimes, Evil drives a mini-van."
--Desperate Housewives

"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:57:57 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:


"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure that
most
people move about every two or three years, so unless something is
really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you
didn't
mean that most people move
about every twenty or thirty years?


Nope. Not where I live. I've been here going on 10 years and I can
hardly
keep-up with the constant parade of people who move in and out of the
neighborhood. The development is about 15 years old, there are only 5
original owners on the street. Of the five, only two have remained

Interesting. In my (very rural) area, the people who live around me now
are mostly the people who
lived in those same houses 30 or 40 years ago.


I grew up in a very small town near Pittsburgh. We moved into a new house
1956 and my mother still lives there. Many of the people on her street are
the same as when I was a kid. Most of the new residents are the result of
the death of the previous owners. The rate of turn-over here is almost
breathtaking. The homes are exactly at the average price point and square
footage for the region. It is a suburban development close to the outerbelt
freeway with easy access to shopping and restaurants and an easy 20 minute
commute to downtown. Many of the homes are on wooded lots or are adjacent
to the communities' greenbelt. It seems to attract people who are in the
demographic most likely to move - the upwardly mobile, young professional
with a growing family. Add to that the seemingly high divorce rate, low
mortgage rates, and a good chance that you will be transferred, and you have
a perfect storm. We love the house, but we were faced with a decision to
move last fall when my partner's company closed the local office leaving a
choice between relocation to Dallas or unemployment. We decided to stay,
but it was a tough decision.

Darren Garrison wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:32:47 -0700, BattMeals wrote:


a3.jpg shows part of a well-trimmed devil strip of the neighbor to the
right.


So, are you from Ohio? I used Google to look up the never-heard-before term "devil strip", and
found this:

http://www.word-detective.com/030600.html

Dear Word Detective: Recently, a friend said that she parked her car on the "devil strip" and
explained that this was the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Can you tell me what
the origin of this term is? (She's from Ohio) -- Wendy Klepfer, via the internet.

Oh, well, there's your answer. People in (and from) Ohio are just plain weird. (I'm allowed to say
that because I happen to live in Ohio at the moment.) Ohio boggles the mind. Our local county
sheriff just got himself indicted by a grand jury on 323 felony charges, but steadfastly refuses to
stop running for re-election. And there's a good chance that he'll win. I think there's something in
the water around here.

What people call that strip between the street and the sidewalk turns out to depend on where they
live. When I was growing up in Connecticut, we called it the "shoulder," but other terms heard
around the U.S. include "tree bank" (common in Massachusetts), " berm," "right of way," "green
strip" and the logical, if unglamorous, "dog walking area."

According to The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which pays close attention to such
local lingo, "devil strip" is heard almost exclusively in Northeastern Ohio, up around Akron. DARE
suggests that the term may arise from the strip's legal status as a sort of "no man's land" between
public and private property.

I've lived in Northeastern Ohio my whole life. We call it the tree lawn.
It doesn't matter if there is no tree, it's still the tree lawn. I never
heard it called anything else. Maybe my world is too small.

Jean Anne

Jean wrote:
I've lived in Northeastern Ohio my whole life. We call it the tree lawn.
It doesn't matter if there is no tree, it's still the tree lawn. I never
heard it called anything else. Maybe my world is too small.

Growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin, everyone I knew called it "the space
between the sidewalk and the street". Of course it wasn't a big topic of
conversation, and people weren't obsessed with giving things nicknames back
then. Eventually I did start to hear it called the "parkway" or "parkway
strip".

Part of the reason for such non-concern about it was that in the City of
Milwaukee, the trees in the strip were planted by, and owned by the City.
The adjoining property owners were not allowed to landscape the strip in any
way. They were expected to keep the grass tended: weeds picked, mowed
properly, and watered. Some folks re-sodded or re-seeded the grass, but
anything more than that could lead to a ticket and removal. In commercial
areas, a request for pavement could be made. Carriage walks could be
installed in residential areas, but they had to be maintained to the same
standards as the sidewalk.

So the ordinary person only had to worry about watering and mowing the
grass, and keeping the dandelions down. There wasn't much of a reason to
come up with a special name for "the strip between the sidewalk and the
street", or "between the sidewalk and the street" for short.

The first time I heard it given any kind of derogatory name was a few years
after moving to Portland, Oregon where I heard it called the "hell strip".
By that time I had noticed that it wasn't a standardized, sanitized zone
like in Milwaukee, and that people landscaped them very differently, and
very seldom does that mean a single tree surrounded by sod. I don't think
I've ever seen anyone watering their "hell strip", either. But my
subdivision doesn't have sidewalks, so it's not something I see everyday.

--
Warren H.

==========
Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my
employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife.
Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is
coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this
response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants
to go outside now.
Have an outdoor project? Get a Black & Decker power tool::
http://www.holzemville.com/mall/blackanddecker/

Vox Humana wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


Vox Humana wrote:
Nature flourishes in my landscape, but it wouldn't be seen as
wild or unkempt by any reasonable person. Ironically, a
"natural" look probably takes more thought and care than a
rigid, formal design. Letting your yard become overgrown with
weeds and calling it "natural" is like letting your kids run
wild and celebrating their exuberance.

What defines the difference between "natural landscaping" and
unkempt? How do we know the difference between a Nieman-Marcus
yard and a Costco one? Do we have a gene for perceiving invasive
species?...


I would say that it is akin to the discernment of pornography vs.
art You know it when you see it. The introduction of the terms
"Nieman-Marcus and "Costco" reinforce my suspicion that there is
something far more emotional about this than landscape design or
plant selection.

What about parts of the country that have a Costco but no Neiman-Marcus?



I don't think it has anything much to do with
money. As my mother used to say, "You don't have to have money to
be clean." In other words, you can spend virtually no money and
have a great landscape. Mowing and pulling weeds is almost free.
You can generally befriend other gardeners and get divisions of
perennials for free. Starting plants from seeds is very
inexpensive. Propagating shrubs from cutting is nearly free. Of
course you do have to devote your time and effort. But really, if
you aren't putting some effort into your landscape, you are a
gardener, you merely coexist with the property. Gardening is not
passive.

I'm not saying that people who don't garden are bad, but as you
see, there are certain expectations placed on you based on your
setting. When you live in a city, there is a social contract and
certain laws. You have the advantage of pooling your resources
with the neighbors and in return you get fire, police, water,
sewers, cultural opportunities and so on. In exchange, people
expect you to conform to a norm that includes, among other things,
a minimum level of yard maintenance. If you live in a planned unit
development, the requirements may be higher. In a rural area,
there are fewer common benefits and lower maintenance requirements.

I think the concept of "invasive species" is a red herring. While
introducing invasives has a strong negative environmental impact,
it has little to do with your particular situation. I suspect that
if you had a well maintained yard full of invasive plants it
wouldn't be a code violation. Again, gardening isn't passive.
Since we aren't born with gardening expertise, one has to do some
research.

As for "natural" and "unkempt" - again, I think it hinges on the
concept of being purposeful and active as opposed to neglectful and
passive. Perhaps "natural" would better be express as "informal."
All landscapes have structure. There is a canopy of trees, a
mid-ground of shrubs and tall perennials, and a foreground of short
perennials and ground cover. There is thought put into sight
lines, just as one would compose a picture. There is consideration
given to leaf size, shape, color, and texture. Function is
considered - is the yard used for sports or relaxation. The
particulars of plant selection and hardscape material depends on
your location and can be skewed to minimize, but not eliminate,
maintenance.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5

Darren Garrison wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:32:47 -0700, BattMeals
wrote:


a3.jpg shows part of a well-trimmed devil strip of the neighbor
to the right.

So, are you from Ohio? I used Google to look up the
never-heard-before term "devil strip", and found this:

http://www.word-detective.com/030600.html

Dear Word Detective: Recently, a friend said that she parked her
car on the "devil strip" and explained that this was the strip of
grass between the sidewalk and the road. Can you tell me what the
origin of this term is? (She's from Ohio) -- Wendy Klepfer, via the
internet.

Oh, well, there's your answer. People in (and from) Ohio are just
plain weird. (I'm allowed to say that because I happen to live in
Ohio at the moment.) Ohio boggles the mind. Our local county
sheriff just got himself indicted by a grand jury on 323 felony
charges, but steadfastly refuses to stop running for re-election.
And there's a good chance that he'll win. I think there's something
in the water around here.

What people call that strip between the street and the sidewalk
turns out to depend on where they live. When I was growing up in
Connecticut, we called it the "shoulder," but other terms heard
around the U.S. include "tree bank" (common in Massachusetts), "
berm," "right of way," "green strip" and the logical, if
unglamorous, "dog walking area."

According to The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE),
which pays close attention to such local lingo, "devil strip" is
heard almost exclusively in Northeastern Ohio, up around Akron.
DARE suggests that the term may arise from the strip's legal status
as a sort of "no man's land" between public and private property.

"Devil" occurs in many such folk terms, applied to plants, animals,
places and things, usually those considered dangerous or
unattractive, and the sense of "devil" when found in place names is
often "barren, unproductive and unused." DARE notes a similar term
"devil's lane," first appearing around 1872, meaning the unusable
strip of land between two parallel fences, often the result of
neighbors being unable to agree on a common fence. And another
term, "devil's footstep," dates back to around 1860 and means "a
spot of barren ground." So it's not surprising that a strip of land
next to the street, unusable by anyone, would be christened the
"devil strip." In fact, for Ohio, it's downright logical.

Around here we call it the parking strip even though it is against the
law to park on it.

Darren Garrison wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I figure
that most people move about every two or three years, so unless
something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that you
didn't mean that most people move about every twenty or thirty
years?

Maybe the people he/she knows move every two to three years just before
the sherriff shows up to evict them.

Tiny Human Ferret wrote:
Darren Garrison wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:57:57 GMT, "Vox Humana"
wrote:
"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:07:27 GMT, "Vox Humana"


wrote:

becomes reactionary because a complaint was lodged. I
figure that most people move about every two or three
years, so unless something is really

Most people move every two or three years? Are you sure that
you didn't

mean that most people move

about every twenty or thirty years?


Nope. Not where I live. I've been here going on 10 years and
I can hardly keep-up with the constant parade of people who
move in and out of the neighborhood. The development is about
15 years old, there are only 5 original owners on the street. Of
the five, only two have remained


Interesting. In my (very rural) area, the people who live around
me now are mostly the people who lived in those same houses 30 or
40 years ago.

In my own jurisdiction, Montgomery County Maryland, the average
length of residence is indeed about 7 years.

My family's been in the same house since 1963.

On "my block", I think there are maybe three families who have been
here more than 20 years, that's out of maybe 30 houses.


Those must be *huge* blocks.


The demographic for the county, in general, is more upscale than my
"affordable" neighborhood. Yet as income and educational levels
increase in this county, the likelihood of frequent moves
apparently rises.
The neighborhood demographic is changing. We used to be the sort of
neighborhood peopled by the successful owners of small businesses
in the services industries -- plumbers, electricians, etc -- and
midlevel government workers. That demographic is largely unchanged,
but the national origins of that demographic is now almost
exclusively in centralamerica although there are a fair number of
asians, increasingly from China.

Many of the asians don't seem to be very interested in landscaping
or gardening, and frequently allow their yards to become rather
overgrown. I suspect that this may be due to unfamiliarity with which
plants
are to be cultivated and encourange, and which should be weeded out
or cut back. Hedges appear to be a complete mystery to many of them.

In their country of origin they probably didn't even have a yard and so
they
know little about landscaping.


The centralamerican approach to gardening is generally to pave the
lawn and park a fleet of work vehicles.

The bloodsucking yuppies, on the other hand, either do a fairly
good job of hiring gardeners who have some slight clue, or replace
the previous home with a "teardown", which is when you gut or
remove the previous structure and replace it with a McMansion,
meaning they fill the property line-to-line with a ridiculously
overpriced "cookie
cutter" home.
Considering that they apparently can't tolerate sunlight, I'm not
too surprised that they don't do a damn thing with their yards
other than design them to be easily and conveniently trimmed by the
centralamerican cadres of lawncutters, and fill the inside of their
homes (presumably, they don't invite me in and I'd be afraid to go)
with overpriced trendy imported trinkets showcasing their lifestyle
of conspicuous consumption on overextended credit.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5

Warren wrote:
Jean wrote:
I've lived in Northeastern Ohio my whole life. We call it the
tree lawn. It doesn't matter if there is no tree, it's still the
tree lawn. I never heard it called anything else. Maybe my world
is too small.

Growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin, everyone I knew called it
"the space between the sidewalk and the street". Of course it
wasn't a big topic of conversation, and people weren't obsessed
with giving things nicknames back then. Eventually I did start to
hear it called the "parkway" or "parkway strip".

Part of the reason for such non-concern about it was that in the
City of Milwaukee, the trees in the strip were planted by, and
owned by the City. The adjoining property owners were not allowed
to landscape the strip in any way. They were expected to keep the
grass tended: weeds picked, mowed properly, and watered. Some folks
re-sodded or re-seeded the grass, but anything more than that could
lead to a ticket and removal. In commercial areas, a request for
pavement could be made. Carriage walks could be installed in
residential areas, but they had to be maintained to the same
standards as the sidewalk.

What is a carriage walk?


So the ordinary person only had to worry about watering and mowing
the grass, and keeping the dandelions down. There wasn't much of a
reason to come up with a special name for "the strip between the
sidewalk and the street", or "between the sidewalk and the street"
for short.
The first time I heard it given any kind of derogatory name was a
few years after moving to Portland, Oregon where I heard it called
the "hell strip". By that time I had noticed that it wasn't a
standardized, sanitized zone like in Milwaukee, and that people
landscaped them very differently, and very seldom does that mean a
single tree surrounded by sod. I don't think I've ever seen anyone
watering their "hell strip", either. But my subdivision doesn't
have sidewalks, so it's not something I see everyday.

I understood that putting in streets, curbs, sidewalks, street lights,
sewer lines and what not as well as houses was what constituted a
subdivision.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5