sorry to any DUers in OK.




Oklahoma plants >12"

throughout the US. AND, the mean, nasty, derogatory, sarcastic, derisive, divisive, hate-mongering, and fear-mongering...

+1 for the post, chervilant

WTF is their problem that they can't see someone growing their own garden? Maybe it makes them sick no one is using their OVER PRICED SUPERMARKETS with OVER PRICED FOOD that is OVER THE TOP in crappyness.

and filing a civil rights lawsuit.
Hope she wins.
The way the story is written I cannot understand why the city destroyed ALL of her plants and "some" trees, esp. since the court told them not to. ( they ought to be cited for contrmpt of court, also)

What?!?!

Trees are forbidden too? I can kinda see a ban on letting grass get above a certain height (although if they were edible vegetables then they should have been left alone, according to the law).

But trees?

Something in the story is missing.

I wish we could have all the facts at once. Maybe journalism is a lost art, at that.

They didn't cut down large trees, it doesn't look like any chainsaws and tree crews were needed. It looks like small trees and shrubs as well as lots of perennials and herbs were removed.

This is messed up, I hope she wins. It seems like she should.

shrubs or vines. People often call shrubs trees when the are taller than they are wide. Although the articles mentions "apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees" were cut down, it doesn't say how tall they were. They could have been shorter and more scraggly than what you are imagining and could possibly have been cut down with loppers.

It looks like she has a good case, though. All those plants that were removed are edible.

It was hard for me to tell from the main photo what she had growing in that photo's particular area, but my guess would be unweeded herbs. However there's another before/after photo where a beautiful well tended border was trashed.

Regardless, numerous lawsuits have happened across the country against cities/towns that have "weed" ordinances by people growing food or wildlife friendly meadows. I believe the people have always won.

There are plenty of dwarf fruit trees, I have an apricot and apple myself. Max height 6-12 feet.

Or is there some other reason for the ban?

Here in L.A., I grow vegetables mostly in large pots. The newspaper prints article on how to grow vegetables, so I think it is permitted.

It seems crazy to prohibit something so healthy.

They screwed up. Neighbors probably complained though because the high plants and weed-like plants harbor critters.

moth balls help. You don't hurt the animals. I put my moth balls in little plastic boxes that have holes so that the smell spreads around.

Neighbors' dogs are more of a problem than garden critters. Squirrels hang around no matter what you do. We had raccoons, but the moth balls solve that problem.

Mice? Cats?

Mice? I don't know. But raccoons? Yes.

No critters. No bugs. No birds. Problem solved. Wall to wall concrete.

once it's established, hard to get rid of. i plant it in containers.

He lives in Tulsa and he said it's probably because she's poor and black.

Overall, he's disgusted and says if they came for her garden then next they'll come for his family garden.

is what those pics don't show is probably the case: the 12 inch law applies to the LAWN itself, not foundation plantings, fence shrubbery, trees, etc.

So I'm guessing she didn't have a lawn, anymore, but replaced it with non-traditional tall plantings (aka weeds) that SHE would eat but which are traditionally non-edible.

When teh city had an exclusion for edible, it was allowing for a garden. In the back yard.

The pics on that site refer to a flower bed, but I can't tell much of anything from that pic, and there isn't a pic of her entire yard, or her back yard, if she has one.

but I cant imagine them getting to the point that someone would have an issue with them.

the city ordinances. The story is very odd.

I wonder if the city thought she was creating a fire hazard.

the foundation, as foundation plantings (aka shubbery). Lawns cannot be over 12 inches in height. You can have a garden in your back yard, though. I used to have a blackberry bush garden, which was several feet high....with a clear boundary as a garden, neat, but still with a regular lawn elsewhere.

I can put tall plantings in the front yard, if clearly marked off...like a tall shrub or something, even if set off away from the foundation.

It's a matter of common sense. The law is to prevent lowering of home values in a neighborhood, people who don't maintain their lawns, the encouragement of varmints, things like that.

If you look at a front lawn and it looks like an abandoned yard, you'll have trouble with the laws, even if you tell them you can't eat those plants. If it's attractive, has a border, etc., etc., it'll pass.

I have great faith in the human race as a whole - but no one makes me question that faith more than Arkies I''ve met......

...and, like the poster you responded to, you really should be careful with the Broad Brush.

The South is beautiful,
and belongs to us all.

In 2006, my Wife & I moved from a Big Blue Northern City
to Dark Red Rural Arkansas.
We ain't going back.


---bvar22 & Starkraven
Turning The South Blue,
one vote at a time.

A beautiful and inviting space you've got there

Sorry, but it really doesn't seem that inviting to 'some' of us......

....not ours.

If you're ever in the neighborhood,
drop in for some Green Beans and Cornbread.
You might change your mind.


You're too late this year for Asparagus or Fresh Strawberries,
but the BlueBerries, Peaches, Tomatoes, Peppers, Cantaloups, and Melons are coming in nicely , and you've probably never tasted a REAL egg.

Ignorance and Poverty IS a problem here,
but, as the posters above aptly demonstrated,
bigotry and ignorance are not limited to The South.

1 out of 3 people in these old mountains voted FOR Obama in 2008,
and the demographics are changing for the better all the time
as educated people realize what The South has to offer.

english garden" look but never been able to achieve it.

For a state that is so heavily Republican - you all remember the Republican's "small government" mantras - this is just nuts. Talk about Nanny State. Geez isn't there any real crime in Tulsa.

I suspect someone in her neighborhood got their knickers in a twist and complained. It's criminal that she had no opportunity to respond.

I know a lot of communities have some pretty strict HOA rules about what a homeowner can and cannot do with their property but this is just over the top. I thought it was over the top when my sister in law lived in a condo complex on Kauai and was not allowed to have clothes rack on her balcony to dry laundry. No beach towels over the railing either.

Her plants were attacked because she is different. Some folks in Tulsa feel that it is their duty to impose their "normal" on, well, everybody - "Make them act like us!" To such people the need for conformance outweighs compassion about 100/1.

When the city replants, she should add chickens, maybe some pygmy goats.

When in doubt, assume racism. You will be right more than you are wrong.

& crew-cut lawns, i wouldn't be so quick to assume it's racism. some people are very uptight about housing values.

i wouldn't have called the city, but i wouldn't like it if my neighbor planted her yard in mint -- because it won't stay in her yard.

I think we now know you don't like mint What about grass - that spreads? If your neighbor has xeriscaping, can they call the city and complain about your lawn?

people do.

her yard is overgrown and looks uncared-for. if she'd put in neat xeriscaping, i doubt she'd have gotten the same treatment, though admittedly it has happened.

who complained, who issued the order to remove or who sent the workers.

the problem is less her race than the fact that she keeps an overgrown yard, which a lot of homeowners are sensitive to.

the city's 12-inch standard is silly but you can see from the picture that she's not growing plants to eat, she's just got a bunch of mint that's been allowed to grow wild all over her yard, plus some junky-looking stakes and strings that don't seem to be marking off anything that looks different from the rest of the yard. is she going to eat all that mint? i doubt it.

since the city ordinance allows for edible plants, it seems to me that its purpose was to prevent people from letting their properties become overgrown, not to force everyone to have a manicured lawn. if she'd made neat beds and kept them weeded or put stuff in pots i doubt she'd have had the same problems.

just my opinion as an urban gardener.

the city workers trashed it though. there was no point in mowing down the borders along her house.

And I agree with you -the yard should not have been trashed the way it was but I guess we don't know what kind of efforts the city made to avoid that, if any.

On edit: my mother is a hoarder and her house is constantly the subject of complaints and even health code violations. So I know how difficult it is to stay on good terms with someone who seems bound and determined to not care about anyone else's opinions.

The justice system in America is out of control.

Ms. Morrison sounds like an artist, and I would heartily welcome her to my neighborhood (the HOA, however, would have a fit):

"Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more."

I hope she wins, and wins big. But God, the time and effort she put in to this yard, I'd cry too. Hopefully the community is rallying around her, but for the asshole(s) who complained.

to have a neighbor like her!!

didn't look like another one of the manicured plastic lawns that some people seem to love.

(as opposed to digging up all the root) many will grow right back. The mints, at the very least, can come back quickly. Certain perennials you can even dig up and they'll come back in a year or two. My chocolate mint actually does a little better if it gets mowed -- it become very nice ground cover that is still edible.

My marshmallow plants come to mind. Periodically, I transplant a few to my pasture. I dig up at least 6" of root, if not more. The remaining root inevitably resurrects itself 2 years later from 6" under.

Not that this makes up in any way, shape or form for what they did, or makes it less horrendous. And the trees, of course, won't come back.

But at least those assholes who decided to excrete their shit on her life are going to have a hell of a time getting rid of her mint.

and if that person has any special influence with the city...

The after picture looks horrible---and much worse than what I saw in the before picture. I do realize that this was just a picture of a spot and the rest of the yard may not have looked as nice, but what they did was overkill.

I hope that she wins big. I hope they have to pay a huge amount in compensation, but I would love to see that crew who did the massacre have to go back and replant the whole thing.

I don't know from the story if she was in a restricted community, but this is why I will never again live in a deed restricted area. Avoid them like the plague.

to destroy her yard need to be the ones out in the heat and blazing sun replanting her yard. And while they're out there, they can install some rain barrels, in case she didn't have any.

so they KILL KILL KILL that which they don't understand.

This is a case in point where Ms. Morrison is "way ahead of the intelligence/knowledge curve".....so the city came and KILLED her long tended/life-giving garden....b/c they don't/didn't understand it's over-all value to human health and to their community as well.

It just "looked ugly"/overgrown to their un-educated minds.

Very very sad story. We all live in amercia now!

Those are the words of a very liberal Arkansas hillbilly I worked with at a previous job.

and wtf is wrong with people that they hate nature so much?

I look at my own perennial garden, and almost everything is over 12 inches high. This ordinance would outlaw roses, lavender, tulips, daffodils, irises... just about every gardener's staple. How on earth does anyone manage to comply with this rule?

the plants are just the right height (12 inches).

where we farm our yards! http://farmmyyard.org/

But plants? No fucking way!

What a terrible thing to do.

And very sad to boot.

The poor woman. I hope she wins her lawsuit.

Though a small portion of the ordinance is cited in the article no mention is made about whether or not the garden was in the front yard or the back yard and what the ordinance says about what is and is not acceptable in one's front yard. I don't know of any suburban township that allows a vegetable/herb garden or fruit bearing trees in the front yard. My township is ridiculous about everyone adhering to the rules for front yards though they don't do anything unless someone makes a complaint. When I first moved here I didn't have anything to cut the lawn with and the grass grew about a half an inch past the regulation height, and some asshole made a complaint. The very next day I got an official notice from the township lawn maintenance police that the lawn was X many millimeters too high and I had 24 hours to cut it or be fined something like $50. Yes, they had to have actually measured it so they could fill in the space on the notice concerning how much past the regulation height it was.

But back yards? They don't give a rat's ass about how trashed up and disgusting one's backyard is. My next door neighbor has the most revolting trashed up back yard I've ever seen. I hate it especially because these are row houses, the yards are minuscule, and I share a chain link fence with them. Just an hour or so ago I went outside to do the daily Poopy Patrol, and noticed that their yard has become an overwhelming epidemic of shit piles from a dog larger than mine. I kid you not, the space taken up by the poop is larger than the actual available ground space (which thanks to all the trash isn't all that much space). The smell is overwhelming, and it's not even very hot out yet. I just recently set up my little swimming pool and can't stand to be outside using it because of the crap stink wafting from their yard. It's also so cluttered up with trash, thigh-high weeds and the remains of what used to be their vegetable garden (which now has poison ivy in it which is creeping toward MY gate). The four year old little daughter there can't even play in the yard and is restricted to the cement walkway when out in the backyard. She has a big plastic princess castle and a jungle gym to play on but now isn't allowed to because they're too fucking gross and lazy to clean up their yard even for HER. Many of us neighbors have complained for two years running now, and once an inspector did come out to take a look at it. I have no idea whether or not they wrote up a citation, but I know for a fact if they did it wasn't paid.

That was last summer and nothing has happened since yet we're all still making complaint calls especially about the dog crap and the poison ivy. One thing that really worries me is that their dog has never received vaccinations for anything other than rabies and only because that's a strict law. I'm on the downhill side of their house, so when it rains rain water will carry any diseases from the crap in their yard into mine - I'm especially worried about parvovirus. The dog crap also invited an absolute plague of flies. I finally got so fed up with them I bought bug netting and hung it around the back door from the awning to keep the flying hordes out of my house. All the neighbor did was hang a strip of fly paper to their awning which is now so covered with dead flies you can't see any paper anymore... yet they constantly complain about the fly horde coming in their house. I finally blew up at them a few days ago with the last complaint and said NONE of us would be dealing with the disgusting fly plague if they would PICK. UP. THE. DOG. SHIT. because that's WHY we have the Great Fly Plague. But this morning the dog shit piles are still there with a couple of fresh ones added to the collection. I'm furious that the township lawn maintenance police gave me 24 hours to trim a couple of millimeters from my front lawn several years ago because one one asshole's complaint, yet with the multitude of complaints about the neighbor's BACK yard and even sending someone out to inspect it, still nothing at all has been done. There's no doubt in my mind that pretty much every other suburban township operates the same way with the enormous difference in how they act concerning either front or back yards. And I'm damned if I understand it.

I would be willing to bet that the woman in the article lives in such a township and that her garden was in the front yard. I'm also willing to bet that when in court another date in October was selected to continue her case that there was no stay put on her garden and why the township showed up the very next day to rip it all up. And I don't believe they would have done so if she had a prayer of winning her case.

I feel badly for her. I don't understand ordinances that have ridiculous restrictions on what can be grown or placed in one's front yard as long as the yard looks nice. If it looks nice, who cares? I can understand not having fruit trees that overhang sidewalks, but other than that I just don't see any logical reason for all the ridiculous restrictions. All that should matter is how it looks. If it looks neat and nice, then what the hell is the problem?

Here's an example of how completely ridiculous the rules are... where I used to live (a few blocks away in the same town) one of my neighbors had a mulberry tree in their side yard that overhung not only the sidewalk but half the street and the little lot where I had to park my car. Mulberry juice is bright purple and stains like crazy. The damn tree made a mess of my carpet and the floor of my car from all the mulberries that I couldn't hope to avoid having to walk through to get in and out of my home and car. I complained to the township, but they said the tree was ok because it was technically the person's side yard... but the house was on a corner lot with no difference in a front or side yard concerning visibility and public areas like sidewalks and the street other than where their front door was situated. THey even used the side door as their front door and had it fixed up with a fancy etched glass door and potted plants and whatnot because there was only parking on that side street rather than the cross street where the technical front door was and they had no driveway. The ONLY reason that the technical front door was designated the front door, and thus the yard on that side as the front yard is because it is that street that was designated their address for the post office. JUST because of an address that damn mulberry tree was allowed to drop its damn berries all over the sidewalk, the street, and my parking space whereas if it was in the "front" yard it would have to have been cut down. How stupid is that? The whole reason the township doesn't want fruit bearing trees in front yards is because of the mess it makes of public spaces like sidewalks and streets and the danger to people using those spaces because of hordes of bees.

Dumb. Dumb as dumb gets.

can't say that I blame you. Not one bit, based on what you have written.
Holy crap, you have something called township lawn maintenance police!?! Sounds almost big-brother-ish.

All joking aside (sorry) I suppose it might not be a bad idea, (I guess) depending on what kind of neighborhood you live in. But in your situation, it does not sound as if whatever ordinances these guys are supposed to enforce are being fairly applied.

Either that, or the regulations as written, fail to codify as strict (or any) such standards to people's back yards. So if I'm reading your post correctly, they are being ridiculously tough about some very minor front yard things, while ignoring issues so awful as to be possible health hazards.

Just a suggestion, (since I have no idea how things work in your area) -but- Is there some other direction you and your other neighbors can take regarding what to do about lazy dog poo neighbor? Maybe there is some sort of township level health/environmental control agency you can contact?

I don't know. Just more or less thinking out loud here, motivated by the fact that the whole thing seems so unfair... not only to you and your other neighbors, but also the little girl involved. Well that, and just because of how helpful your advice was to me when I lost my dog in January. I wish I could reciprocate with better idea(s) but know very little about suburban township level governance. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck with this whole situation.

Oh, and thanks for shedding some light on why the poor woman in the OP may be going through her own ordeal. Not that I agree with it- at all ... But I now better understand why the city of Tulsa might have thought they could (and may still) get away w/such BS.

Technically, it's just the township code enforcement office but they mostly handle building inspections, zoning issues and that sort of thing. But part of their function is to deal with whatever rule violations there may be concerning the local property ordinances. I just call them the Lawn Maintenance Police when they do these ridiculous things like waste time and tax payer money measuring the height of someone's lawn grass and citing and following up on millimeter grass infractions. We also have what I call the Garbage Inspection Police which is also the code enforcement department... but that's another interesting and ridiculous story.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, the neighbors have halfway cleaned up their backyard! I went out in the yard last night to do the pool chemicals and couldn't believe my eyes... or my nose. The poop is gone, the poison ivy is gone, the thigh-high weeds and former vegetable garden have been hacked down, but the trash was just shoved into one corner (and there's so much of it it's taking up about a third of the whole yard). It's a start though. I have no idea what brought this on - for a second I panicked and wondered if they read my rant here on DU! But I know they couldn't have because they haven't had internet service for over a year (they sometimes ask me to look something up on the internet for them). They also don't give a crap what the neighbors think of their yard... they've made that abundantly clear.

It's really strange, but I actually like these people. Well, I like her - him I wouldn't mind if he got lost in a forest two trees thick for the rest of his natural life. I just found out through the neighborhood gossip that he's been thrown out again (I wondered why it was so quiet over there the past week), but this is the fourth or fifth time since they moved in, and she always takes him back in a week or two. People seem to think that this time is the winner because he's apparently living with some other woman now. We'll see. I'd really hope he's gone for good this time since he was always 99% of the problem. Dealing with the problems they cause the neighbors is a lot harder when you don't hate the people. Everyone else here is pretty much the same - they drive us all nuts, but they're somehow likable people.

As for the whole health issue - Oh yes, I definitely consider their yard a health issue especially all the dog crap. I've been through that before with the code enforcement office though. Actually, the whole reason I live in this house is because there was a health code issue at my old place that forced me to move immediately, and it was the code enforcement office that dealt with that whole issue. That landlord also had major zoning problems, and it turned out that he wasn't even zoned to rent that place to anyone other than a family member (I have no clue what kind of ordinance the township has about who can live in what place and whether or not they're family - talk about a ridiculous ordinance!).

In any case, it's still the code enforcement office that deals with health problems concerning property in the township whether it's private or commercial or whatever. Same office - same dumbasses. I don't know, maybe it's just too much variety of stuff for one office to deal with. I really think it would make more sense to break it up into more specific departments especially when the people that work there only seem to have knowledge of the ordinances and building codes - they're are more like engineers and don't seem to have other experience with health matters, etc. Or maybe they just don't give a crap.

Ok, about the township Garbage Inspection Police... where I used to live my landlord was pulling all kinds of code scams unknown for years to me and the other tenant. It turned out that he wasn't zoned to have more than one rental property in the building, and the one he was allowed to have was only zoned to be lived in by either himself or a family member. All this came to a head years after me and the other tenant started living there. The code enforcement office came over to inspect several times in order to figure out who was living there and our relationship to the landlord. Apparently, he was giving them a bunch of bull about who we were telling them that we were his niece and nephew! What also made me furious is that he also apparently told them at another time that I was his girlfriend and we both lived in my place... the guy was over 80 years old! Bad enough that he'd say something like that about me if he was reasonably youngish, but he was an old man making me look like some kind of weirdo or gold digger! Thankfully, the code enforcement office didn't believe any of his stories, but they had to prove it.

They finally were able to get him into court on his absolute refusal to provide garbage collection for us tenants. We BEGGED him to even let US pay the minuscule amount of money the yearly fee is to have our trash collected, but he refused on some sort of bizarre principle. Not providing garbage collection is a health ordinance violation, and a pretty serious one. For years me and the other tenant would sneak our trash out at night the day before collection days and mingle our trash with the trash of our neighbors. Neither of us had any way to get rid of our trash since both of us worked at buildings where the trash dumpsters were padlocked so we couldn't even take our trash to get rid of where we worked. All the neighborhood private dumpsters had padlocks on them too and probably because of our wacko landlord... he's probably had previous tenants go dump their trash in the private dumpsters of local small business properties that are required to have a dumpster.

In any case, in order to prove he wasn't providing us garbage collection and figuring out what we were doing with our trash they had what I call the township Garbage Inspection Police go out and collect the trash of our neighbors before the trash removal team got there and actually went through our trash for information on who owned it! It makes me sick to think of what personal stuff they were digging through in order to find out it was my trash... a tampon box, cleaned up barf from the dog puking on the carpet, coupons for free porn videos... who the hell knows what! For heaven's sake they could have just ASKED us what we were doing with our trash since we kept TELLING them we were desperate for them to make him provide us with garbage collection, and we were pissed off about the lies he was telling them about us... we were completely honest and free with information for them because we were on THEIR side! Yet they sent out the Garbage Inspection Police to search our trash when all they had to do was ASK us what we were doing with it... in fact, I'm sure we had already told them up front what we had to do with it since we weren't getting garbage collection from the landlord.

Yet another example of how crazy and stupid the code enforcement office is.

But it gets even MORE crazy. What made us have to move and move immediately was a serious health problem in the building... my clothes dryer vented into my attic instead of to the outside of the building. I never went up into the attic. When I first moved in I stored stuff up there that I never used and never went back up there again - I never had a reason to. During the last inspection I mentioned something about the attic, and the code enforcement office had NO IDEA that I HAD an attic! These dumbasses were doing all this building inspection without any floor plans of the building! They also missed an entire studio apartment that existed in the basement! There had been a tenant in there for awhile, but he trashed the place and skipped out in the middle of the night after not paying rent for a few months, and the landlord never spent the money to fix up the place to try renting again. Now really, how stupid can these people be to be doing all this inspecting to try to nail our landlord especially on zoning ordinances and they not only have no idea that I had an attic in my place but they missed an entire apartment in the basement??? How could they not realize that in a perfectly square building that they were missing all that ground floor space behind the commercial property on that floor? Did they just assume that all that space was a giant storage closet??? Idiots.

So anywho... when I mentioned the attic they had to go up and inspect it and FREAKED out. They discovered the dryer vent up there and the whole attic was covered in three inches of lint dust from the dryer which is highly combustible. The building essentially became a bomb because of that, and both me and the other tenant were court ordered to move within a week though they told us they'd be a lot happier if we stayed at motels until we moved so we weren't at least sleeping there at night. That's how I ended up living where I am now. Thank GOD I found this place so easily, my landlady is really nice, and though the house is hardly the greatest (it's really ancient and creaky with all kinds of various small problems) I pretty much like living here, and though it's expensive for me compared to comparable places it's very very reasonably priced. And I get trash collection and the dryer is vented outside the building... I made sure to check. LOL!

So yeah, within our township code enforcement office we have Lawn Maintenance Police as well as Garbage Inspection Police. I bet your code enforcement office has them, too.

On a side note... I'm so thrilled that the poop next door is gone that I want to jump in my pool except that it's cold as hell outside and now it looks like rain, and the pool water feels like glacial melt... brrrrr! Winter was weirdly warm, and now it looks like summer is going to be weirdly cold. It's more like the beginning of April this month than June.

No really, who needs a teevee, computer, or outside entertainment when you've got all of that going on? Especially at your previous place. Truly a head scratcher, that whole ordeal! It probably wasn't at all funny at the time, but come on- looking back on it, the idea of you and the other tenant having to sneak your garbage into the neighbor's piles, the 80 year old landlord trying to pass himself off as your sugar daddy, in his dreams, right?

Then of course, if that was not enough, there was the downstairs runaway tenant, code enforcement having no clue about something as basic as your building layout, not knowing just by a glance, that you'd have a basement and likely an attic- Oh and that attic... Yikes!- Ok that part wouldn't be funny, then or now. I'll definitely give you that. House-fires freak me out. One of my greatest fears actually.

But overall, your old place, while probably a huge pain in the a** at the time, certainly makes for an interesting story. Plus, it's got to make you thankful for where you are now, lazy dog poo guy and 'lawn maintenance police' issue(s) not withstanding. Ha! Btw, it cracks me up that you call them that, along w/the 'garbage inspection police'- I should have known that it sounded too bizarre to be real.

Your other neighbors sound pretty decent, and hopefully dog poo guy is gone for good this time. Oh, and you have a pool! I'd love to have a pool! Oh well, maybe someday.

My home and neighborhood is dullsville in comparison. Well, with the exception of the next door people who, despite having lived there for nearly 3 years now, I can't quite figure out. Other then their penchant for tacky lawn ornaments, they seem normal enough. That is until you see the inexplicably dumb things they do.

At first I thought that this older couple and their 40'ish son might be alcoholics or drug users, because no one in their right minds would go through SO many perfectly good lawn mowers (for example). The son seems to purposely run over the same rocks every time he mows, then acts completely baffled when he kills it. I swear that they've been through at least 5+ mowers while the one we've had for over 10 years keeps ticking- This is but one example of tons of things- and it's not just the son. I can only conclude that stupidity plays a role in their almost daily predicaments. There seems to be no other explanation.

Oh well, it's their money, so whatever. At least they keep to themselves as do we, so it's all good, I guess.

We have had "issues" with the code-police over our DELIBERATE avoidance of a "front lawn". and we just roto-till it and put up some stakes for a while & they go away. Our soil & slope are not conducive to a successful lawn (we have tried several times over the years).
That said, our front area is always kept neat and litter/weed free and not unlike many front lawns in our area.

The woman in the article probably ran afoul of a similar ordinance and unless she wants to move to the "country" where rules are less onerous, she will have to stick to backyard gardening.

With dwindling resale prices for homes, people in the neighborhood may be more touchy than they used to be. Many times realtors "scout" areas for homebuyers, and curb appeal of neighborhoods is a financial issue, so I can understand how someone on her block who may not have gotten enough showings of their "for-sale" home, might have thought her yard had something to do with it...(that could be a reason why someone complained)

Don't they have any real problems in Tulsa ?

Shame on them.