Yard Criminals

August 3, 2007

Last week, Julie was sitting home, enjoying a bit of peace and rest while the kids were quietly playing on their own.  It doesn’t happen very often, so it’s a big deal!  Then the doorbell rang and Julie opened the door to find a Layton city cop.  Now, some of you will remember that Julie has never done well around cops.  Once she got pulled over for driving too slow.  The cop just wanted to encourage her to speed up a bit but he ended up having to console a bawling teenager who apparently thought going slow must be a prisonable offense.  So the presence of the policeman, combined with raging pregnancy hormones was not a good mix and Julie almost immediately was in tears.  The policeman informed her that someone had complained about our yard, that we were in violation of city ordinances with the weeds in our yard, and that we had 2 weeks to get things cleared up or we would receive a citation.  He was actually very nice about it.  But I was ticked off.  That lot where our house sits has been uninhabited for 25 years before we built our house, totally overgrown with weeds every single one of those years.  And now when it is TOTALLY OBVIOUS that we are putting in our sprinklers and getting ready for grass and actually trying to make it a nice yard, we get complaints.  So I called the officer and he was pretty understanding.  I told him that we had to fight with Layton city for 2 YEARS to get the irrigation water that we had paid for and that the previous owner of the land had paid for every year and that was supposed to be part of our property actually put in and that there was NO WAY I was going to pay $400 or more a month to water an acre with culinary water when I’m paying for irrigation rights every year.  Yes, there is an ordinance that says that your front yard has to be in 18 months after you move into the house.  But that also implies that the basic utilities to be able to get that done and which we’ve been paying for, have actually been put in.  Well, he agreed and said that as long as we’re working on actually improving it, that’s what matters.  I just wish I could tell that to whoever complained.  I asked who did and he said it was an anonymous complaint.  So Mr. Anonymous Busybody Neighbor, I just have this to say:

“Believe me, NO ONE wants this yard completed more than WE do.  Do you think we like having the ugliest yard in the neighborhood?  Do you think I like telling my kids they can’t go out and play or that they have to go to the park to play because of all the dirt, mud, weeds, and sticker bushes that are all over our yard?  Maybe if you were as observant of the people in my yard as you were about the yard itself, you would notice that we have been working on that yard, on getting the sprinklers in, on getting the weeds taken care of so we can put in grass.  We’ve had friends and family come help us.  It’s a big job.  It sat untended for 25 years while you and the rest of our neighbors used it as a dumping ground, or a golf driving range (we have found a ton of golf balls as we’ve been doing this sprinkler system) or a hot-air balloon launching pad (seriously, a neighbor ran their hot air balloon ride business from our property at one point), or a scenic view spot (even now with our house built, we still have people just wander right into our backyard to look at the view, like there’s not a house there – really weird), or a “political/garage sale/open house sign” place.  I’d like to get it done too.  And soon it will be and we’ll have a nice big yard that we can invite the whole neighborhood over to for a barbecue.  I only wish I knew who you were so I could UN-invite you.  Next time, be a man, come talk to me if you have a problem with my yard or my kids or whatever and I’ll be more than happy to explain what’s happening so we can resolve it like good neighbors.”

OK, done venting.   And here’s some pics of the latest work we’ve been doing on our yard:

Posted in Home Projects