HOAs | Mother Nature’s Helpers … or Hinderers?

Well, this Optimistic Gardener is a little jaded this evening, having gotten an annoying letter from our Homeowner’s Association. Apparently, in this year after the “Big Drought,” in the days following big rain storms, and in a period of exorbitantly high gas prices, managers from our neighborhood’s Homeowner’s Association are driving around to check out the state of weeds in suburbia. 

Forget that it’s fairly insulting to be the object of the allusion that all that is wrong with your entire neighborhood is your two-week overgrown garden … these “managers” that we’re paying are using the funds we paid to keep up the tennis courts and (I guess) keep our neighbors on the same short leash as us are burning through fossil fuels and the gas line item, and increasing the office supply and postage budgets. 

As a gardener, my family practices rainwater-only gardening, because we don’t want to add any treatment chemicals to the water table. Then there’s the D-word, which jerked a knot in us last year. I’d much rather have water to drink and cook with and to use when washing our clothes. So, it offends me to get this note from my homeowner’s association. I’m a great gardener, and for the most part I’m a good neighbor. 

Our questions:

• Why couldn’t they place a call and save the gas, paper consumption and cost of postage for this first warning?
• Is it okay that representatives from a group we pay are using their time and our money to look at weeds as opposed to re-surfacing the tennis courts and covering drain pipes?
• Would Mother Nature consider the subject of this note, and the approach of delivering the message, to be helpful … or a hinderance?
• And, most importantly, does a homeowner’s association trump environmentally conscientious?