The Homeowner's Association

I live in shivering, quaking, rigdly infuriated fear of the Homeowners' Association. Like I've mentioned before, I live in a "Country Club Community", and while we are not even remotely fancy enough to be Golf Members with, I don't know, the baby-hunting rights you get when you drop 15k in initial fees and then $500 a month after that, we are "Sports" Members. What that means is that we are allowed to play tennis if the courts ever get built, and go to Special Social Events That The Rest of the Plebes Don't Get To Go To, but we are only allowed to play golf on weekdays, kind of like letting your freaky Uncle Fester out of the house but only in the backyard, only on weeknights past midnight so he can raise his aggrieved, disfigured face to the moon and howl. Or whatever. Okay, that was kind of a tangent, but when you live in a Kuntry Klub Kumunity, the people who share your amenities can, and often are, some of the most uptight, megalomaniacal, asshole pricks on the face of the planet, who can stand nothing, and I mean nothing, that is, in any way, different or unusual. Hence this whole thing, not just talking to you about how I can play golf on Tuesdays at 10 AM.

AAaaanyway. We took a week off from work together, in order to bond and also do some gardening, because my lofty plans for my house were to rip out all the faux-deserty-Southwesternish stuff that had been left there that we had not already exorcised from the flower beds, and my husband had this fantastic dream to build a new flowerbed by the side of the driveway and, I don't know, fill it with tulips and shit. He has a lot of fantasies that he retains, unhindered by such inconsequential things as "Hardiness Zones."

It is the policy of our Homeowner's Association that all landscaping and visible changes to the house or yard or backyard or even if you are maybe walking naked in front of your window, that these things must be 30 days approved, with advanced notice and a nominal $50 fee submitted, which will not be refunded, regardless of approval status (note: this is the same HOA that replants every median at least 6x a year because they don't know what else to do with all the fucking money they have, and you know, dropping rates isn't an option). Our philosophy, after installing Floyd, was "oh, go fuck yourselves" and figured it was better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission.

So, we said fuck it, dug up a lot of stuff, planted a bunch of new stuff, dug up a bed, planted a plum tree, you name it, we went apeshit on our yard. Which looks lovely now, I might add. Well, lovelier. We are having a bit of a weed situation.

But I was convinced, every time a car drove slowly past our yard (we live on a corner lot, a little bit down from the mailbox, and often people drive by our house to turn around), that they were the HOA Gestapo, writing down that our mulch was black, not dark brown, and that we had exceeded our allotment of front yard trees, and the questionable nature of a plum tree qualifying as a native tree to our location.

Having gotten snippy letters on bright green Kinko's Birthday Party-style cardstock reminding us to "please edge your lawn" or weird, blackmaily pictures taken at 8 AM Tuesday morning of our trashcan left out on the curb (Monday is trash day) reminding us in no uncertain terms that we don't give a fuck that you both were sick as hell, move your goddamned trashcan inside, assholes, I am constantly all aquiver that we are going to receive the Remove That Fucking Tree letter from the HOA. And yet, at the same time, I kind of hope for it, in a Norma Rae moment, where I can stand up and tell all those uptight 65-year-old assholes to stick it up their pooper and I dare them to take me to court.

I'll probably just get rid of the tree, though.

Floyd

One of the most aggravating, soul-sucking, hateful things to do in the entire universe is gardening in the suburbs. Technically, in our neighborhood, you have to file a request with the HOA (each filing has a fee, which I think is anywhere from $25 to $50) whenever you make any "landscaping" changes. That essentially means that anything that isn't in a flower pot will, technically, cost you an extra $50.

"Fuck that", we say. Figuring that we can risk it and not spend the money, or pay the money and run the risk of not getting approved, we figured, better to do and get punished later than get shut down by the Robot Corps of Engineers.

We live on a corner lot, with three (3) officially sanctioned tree species, all native but non-invasive. One (1) of these trees died. By which I mean, it stopped growing. We are in a fairly new development. Our house was built in the 21st century, so the tiny little trees are still relatively small (although relatively less small that our neighbors, being that we bought one of the first houses on the block). Said tree was not growing leaves and looked ugly and gross, so we cut it down. With a chainsaw. After an aborted first try which made us incredibly confused why the chainsaw wasn't working (turns out the geniuses at our local Giant Orange Store Where Nobody Helps You put the chain on, oh, backwards. We did almost start a trunk fire, though. It smelled nice), we got a correctly assembled chainsaw (this time, with gas!) and cut it down.

Here is something that you might not know. Stump removal, even of a smallish tree with a trunk diameter of oh, let's say, 12", is not, well, easy. It is, in fact, incredibly shitty. Especially when that stump is on a hill. It took us sitting on either side, rhythmically kicking the trunk to either side, like an arboreal, stationary version of those oldentimey hand cars.

After much toil and trouble, the stump was removed, and we were ready to quest for a new tree. Yours truly has always had a fantasy to plant a great, gorgeous icon of the South that would shade my lawn and provide a convenient place to fan myself and bemoan the state of things over a mint julep. Off to the nursery we went. Fortune befell us - sometimes, kids, procrastination works in your favor. Since it was, for my climate, far past optimal tree-planting time, there was a half-off sale on trees. Hooray. And so, after searching, I found a lush, 10' tall tree with one seed-pod thingy on it, evidence of a blooming-age tree (this is a good thing, as these trees apparently take forever to bloom when they're small).

After purchasing the tree, we attempted to cram it into our midsize Sport SUV. This actually turned out to require dropping the passenger-side seat all the way down, shoving the tub part (you know, the root part, the container that the tree lives in) way up to the front windshield, the back door open, and my devoted husband leaning out and hefting up the top part of the tree to prevent it from dragging on the ground.

Only when the tree was already loaded in the car (look, it took a lot of work) I noticed, in pink chalk, was scrawled "Sold: Floyd".

Whoops. Well, I thought, it's not really my fault that I didn't see it and the store sold it to me, right? And it wasn't like I was about to take that fucking tree OUT again and put another one in. Fuck Floyd, we thought, and took the tree home, and planted it.

After a couple of weeks of uncertainty, our tree (obviously, named Floyd) is now doing very well and is slowly growing new lovely leaves and I am hoping will bloom in a couple of weeks. I still feel bad for old Person Floyd, but I would like to believe that this tree in particular would have died in whatever horrible location he would have put it in. More likely though, the person got totally screamed at. Sorry, nursery employee. Sorry, Floyd. The tree is good, though. We might be able to arrange visitation rights.