In the Eye of the Beholder

My community needs a face-lift: with all the empty properties, it looks pretty grim during the morning walk, with dead lawns, entire front yards taken over by weeds and the remnants of dead shrubbery, and bare front yards of landscaping rocks migrating into the roadways. Code Enforcement has been making the rounds, trying to keep the worst at bay so realtors can show properties to potential buyers, but it's a daunting task. Thus, when a buyer purchases a home and begins reno, as well as landscaping, we all breathe a huge sigh of relief because it makes our property, as well as our neighborhood, looked lived in and cared for.

Except for one local resident who decided on an artistic take to his landscaping based on the devastation caused by the volcanic eruption at Mt. St. Helens.

(photo at mydesert.com) His artistic aesthetic is unusual, but it's a work in progress, with the bare tree remnants representing the trees left behind from the lava flow forming the foundation of the art piece. His goal is to add desert rocks, as well as appropriate plantings, throughout the landscape he's creating, but Code Enforcement received a complaint, so the project has been halted.

If you were to walk down my block, you would see a wide range of landscaping, from bare sand to bare lanscaping rock to planned vignettes to desert landscaping to total neglect, but Code Enforcement went into the archives to pull out the original code as a reason to require the homeowners to rethink their landscaping plan. Originally, we all were required to have lawn and a minimum of two trees in the front of each property, which is what I found when I moved into my residence. It did not take more than one summer of increased water rates and constant mowing to realize this was not going to work for me. My yard is now all desert landscaping, which requires minimum care, so I am no longer in compliance with the original code.

However, residents (after I finished my landscaping) were encouraged to remove the lawns and replace landscaping with more drought tolerant plantings, with the prize for so doing a check for $3,500 (which I would love to have received to offset the cost to me out-of-pocket!). So, it appears on the surface that the City is not in compliance with its own Code and the homeowner has the right to become more drought resistant, which this artistic landscaping certainly is: it does not require any water presently! Not so, says the Enforcement Officer, because it does not blend with the landscaping at other homes in the neighborhood.

Okay, if I want to "blend" with the other homes in MY neighborhood, I'd have to let my yard go fallow or cover it over with weeds or bare landscaping rocks! That argument is weak at best, but it appears that the City has the right to force this homeowner to remove all the bare limbs and come into compliance with the current thinking by the City and the randomly-implemented other landscaping on his block so he blends.

Do we NOT have more important items on the to-do list, such as paving all our roadways? My street is a stream of potholes, with no curbs and no sidewalks: how about putting as much effort into "blending" that problem as accommodating a busy-body neighbor who has forced the City into dealing with an artistic landscaping?