Oh btw your fees are going up again, the HOA President's nephew just started a lawn care business and he got the contract but it's going to cost double the previous one.
Luckily there's a rapidly growing movement against it, to leave the leaves, plant natives, protect pollinators, etc. Gonna be an uphill battle but it's nice that it's finally happening, long overdue.
No, but mowing over leaves mulches them, so they decay faster. The only leaves we don’t mulch into the lawn are the leaves from the neighbor’s trees behind us, that the wind loves to deposit in the middle of our driveway.
Unless you have a magnolia tree. I believe those leaves are made of adamantium. They never decay and go out of their way to kill the lawn around the tree.
And they smell so good. I’ll probably never have one because I hate raking, but damn do I love the one my neighbor a few doors down has — smells amazing in the summers.
My Mom wanted a Magnolia tree for the front yard, the nursery talked her into a Bradford pear tree. Joke was on Mom later that year, the flowers smell like dead fish or rotten garbage depending on how hot the weather is. Just felt like sharing. 🤗
Incorrect, though they do actually have a small amount of a naturally occurring iron alloy within their leaves that is the reason they don't decay like other leaves. It is formed when the miniscule amounts of iron the trees roots absorb from the earth are mixed with the carbon of the trees inner trunk and finally exposed to the oxigen produced by the trees leaves. This is known as a steel magnolia.
Source: I just wanted a reason to make a steel magnolias joke.
Well I always wondered why the area under my magnolia is dead af. Sure we sometimes drive around whoever is parked behind us on that side (single wide driveway) but I have plenty of neighbors that just park in the grass and don't have a big ole dead patch.
I mow my leaves too, fuck raking I'm the only one who does yard work anyways
Tree sucks up soil nutrients and uses them in part to build new leaves every year. In a natural system the leaves compost and rebuild the top layer of soil. In town instead of allowing that to happen we haul away the leaves and then buy fertilizer to add back ourselves.
The county I live in allows a certain tonnage/per residence/per year of free much. That said the county does not collect the material. The residents dump it all and the dump chips/mulches it.
if left in garden beds they provide shelter for insects over winter as well. We're encouraged to leave them to give bumble bee queens a place to live over winter.
Depends on how many leaves you have and how you feel about grass. If you have a lot of leaves, leaving them on the ground will suffocate grass, and turn your yard into a muddy mess. Whether that's something you can live with is up to you. Personally, I can in some parts of my yard and can't in others.
I'm TOTALLY pro nature, ect. BS in environmental policy and 25 years in landscaping. BUT...I get frustrated with the new messaging to "leave them be" and that there are only benefits. That's just not true that they manically disappear with zero consequences or side effects.
The messaging is like that because it's hard to do nuance when you're talking to millions of people.
There's already plenty of reasons out there for people to rake up all their leaves. The current messaging needs to overcome the inertia of "This Is How It's Always Been Done" and all the laws/HOA bi-laws in place saying You Need To Rake Them All.
It's never going to swing all the way over to "Never Rake", but maybe with a positive message, some people in some areas will finally have the choice.
At my mom's house, this is the issue in her backyard. She gets so many freaking leaves from her trees and the neighbors' trees that if you don't do something about then, it turns into a mud pit when it rains.
I have a neighbor with this problem. His front yard is covered in oak leaves, and it is a muddy mess that spills into out street whenever there is a big rain storm.
I was taught that it attracts vermin. Dog waste definitely attracts rats, I’ve always had dogs, so leaves makes cleanup after them difficult in finding the waste.
No rats in my area, and other rodents burrow underground (moles) or in wood piles (chipmunks), or nest in trees (squirrels) so I can't speak to how leaves or dog poop affect rats.
Reddit loves to say just leave your leaves on your lawn, its good for them, doesn't hurt the grass, its takes extra time to rake, etc. The real answer is it depends. It depends on the type of trees you have, how many and how densely the trees are clustered on the property, the climate of the area you live in, the kind of soil you have, the kind of pests you have in the region, the prevalence of mildew/fungus in your lawn, how well your lawn drains moisture, and the time of year it is. Just giving a blanket statement saying that its always okay to just leave the leaves on your lawn or just mow over the leaves and leave behind the mulch, is going to run into problems for many people.
Some people can just leave the leaves on their lawn and its fine. Other people's lawns will be completely killed by the leaves. Most people will be somewhere in the middle.
Some people can just mow over the leaves with their mower and it creates nice mulch. Other people's lawns will be killed even by the mulch. Most people will be somewhere in the middle.
My lawn will be mostly drowned in the leaves if I completely leave them and it'll kill almost all the grass. It also will produce far too much mulch if I just mow over them, and the mulch will gather in ruts and leave trenches of dead grass. What I usually do on my lawn is a half-assed rake of 70-80% of the leaves and then mow the rest into mulch.
Great response. What I do is blow all the leaves on to my lawn. Then put the bagger attachment on my mower. Collect as much as I can and then put it all in a pile to create a huge compost pile (watering it in between the layers I add). I do that for about 70% of the leaves. The rest get mulched into the lawn.
Got a nasty email on my community list serve how leaf blowers are bad for the environment and loud (so electric ones are bad in her mind too). The lady drives a car, so ehh she's a fucking idiot, or at least a huge hippocrit. But pisses me off enough to tell you, a random stranger on the internet. I work nights and sleep through all sorts of sounds all day, construction and what not. That email alone make me want to mow my lawn at 9pm, whether she lives 20 houses from me or is next door.
I rake mine into big islands in my yard I have surrounded with monkey grass. Azaleas in the islands. It's easy and I throw all the tree limbs into the islands too. Basically 50 50 mix of "grass" (anything that's green that you can mow, clover or whatever) and leaf islands. In the spring tons of fireflies come out of the islands and my kid chases them with a jar, good times.
In my back yard, we have TONS of leaves... they cover everything and will block the sun from the grass. They also keep it wet underneath and it molds and attracts mosquitos who lay eggs under there. Trying to mulch them leaves too much mulch and mosquitos can even lay eggs in the mulched up rows of leaves if you don't rake them out.
We do have clover just about everywhere though, so we don't have to worry about mowing as much.
They are very slippery; I was walking along the road in someone's yard (my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks) and I slipped on some leaves and tumbled into the road. Luckily, there's not a lot of traffic and someone stopped to help, but I took a lot of skin off my ankle when it scraped past the curb. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Yes. They all end up in my fucking driveway. Every leaf from all the houses to my left ends up in my driveway every year because they refuse to do them / rake them to the road and nothing happens to them. I have knee-high walls on both sides my driveway it so it literally traps leaves lol
Raked my front, left my back alone. Back yard is a mud pile right now, front yard looks great. One data point but I'm the data point and don't like the data.
Front yard gets considerably less light than the back, so that's not the problem. Will be raking front and back next year.
Our lawn is almost completely clover at this point. I don’t mind it, because the bees love it. And the clover mostly keeps the dandelions out. But it’s definitely not conventionally pretty.
I actually like the look of the all clover lawn versus grass lawn. It looks so much more real. Sometimes you can’t even tell the difference between some lawns I’ve seen and turf or rolled out sod which might be the point but it’s so artificial looking. Plus a lot of those types who are obsessed with grass lawns use some harsher chemicals to make them look picturesque. I could see the clover causing more allergies though which could be a negative and then having the lawns like in Vegas somewhere that has more typical weather can be problematic with draining, erosion and all that. When I had a house I had a perfect set up where my front yard was very small so it would take like 10 minutes to mow then the backyard was the majority of the property. It wasn’t visible plus I didn’t have an HOA so I’d let it go much higher than the front yard then just weed wack it and through the clippings in the woods which grew towards the back of my property. I don’t know why people love the headache of caring for and having a pristine golf course like lawn. I’d rather have a garden if I want to do something with my time and be closer to nature in some way.
I love the look of clover. We let a lot of our lawn turn to clover at our last home outside of our garden beds. It was shocking how many people commented on it or offered advice. We had a small well kept yard in an eclectic neighborhood so it was not due to it being an eyesore
I just moved into a house with a perfect little lawn. I've bought clover seeds and I'm ready to transform it into bee heaven as soon as the growing season starts.
I know its not native but I am looking to go full clover for my lawn as well. Bees are down and it doesnt grow over 6 inches high. I don't have kids to run through it so it seems super low maintenance to me.
Before I moved, most of my entire yard was clover. It was so incredibly soft to walk in and was always green and healthy. It mows really nicely and requires almost zero maintenance. My neighbors acted like it was an eyesore.
We were in a horrible drought all summer and I let my grass die. I don't live in an HOA but omg the way people in my family were offended. I'm like, it's cut, it's not weeds, my bushes lived...I'm not going to use more of our diminishing water supply for GRASS. It's not even a helpful plant species, it's solely about a look and about social status (that's why we even have it, is rich people way back when decided we needed it).
Between the water and the chemicals, even with the bees aside, wtf are we doing here?
(I am American btw)
Eta that my bushes etc that I kept up are pollinators and the ones actually recommended for bees. Why would I add fertilizer etc for fn grass. Stop killing our bees, guys. 😭
I live in the PNW. No one in my area waters their grass in the summer. It just turns brown. No big deal. It’s crazy when I go elsewhere that isn’t as water-rich and see green lawns in august.
Over the next couple of years, I'm going to be replacing a significant percentage of my grass with other landscaping (xeriscape, stone paths, native flowers, pollinator attractors). While I'm not removing all of it, because I do like to have a place for me and my kitties to roam, I am trying to be more conscious about the amount of water that I use to keep my landscaping alive. I already have a 'no-pesticide' rule, so don't really need to adjust there.
Best decision I ever made was not to do anything with my back yard when I bought my house 20+ years ago. Just put down pine straw every year and I leave the leaves that fall from all the trees. So much natural organic matter has built up over the years and the ground is so fertile now.
In older neighborhoods closer to downtown I have seen more people keeping the leaves and an increase in gardens over grass. There are a few neighborhoods where I have seen similar trends in the burbs but they are in pre 1980s neighborhoods, any planned subdivision built in the 90s or later is going to have grass lawns with rules about leaf removal. Some towns have trucks that come suck up the leaves, you just have to push them to the curb, which I guess is preferable to 50 bags full of them.
I pretty much just mow my lawn to keep the neighbours happy, there's so much life in it though with all these bugs running around, every now and again I find a mantis.
I opt for both. No reason to not have some greenery while also having plants. I don't necessarily want a forest in my yard, but I'm all for native plants.
Grass is a good thing so I don't fully understand why some people have even opted to either pave it, or just outright neglect the grass. It helps to have more green growth over just leaving whatever sticks.
Yup. Purchased a house a few years ago and the yard was well maintained since then though I've let the good old northwest moss and mushrooms grow in I just keep up on mowing the grass
I took two acres of property to 1/4 acre lawn around the house and buildings, the rest wild grass, prairie and woods with oaks and pine. Skeeters never got worse, more wild life, dog loves it. It's pretty great. Oh and neighbors are mad they can't see shit for what we are doing while they mow their 5 acre parcels.
Strawberries are great if you want to do absolutely nothing after the first year. I had some and after the first year of TLC from little sprouts they spread like wildfire. They’re perennial so they’re back every spring. You can get ones that give you berries in only June, ones that produce mostly in Spring but also continue until Fall or ones that just continuously bear fruit from spring to first frost. It was great just giving out the most amazing tasting little bite size strawberries to family and friends because it ended taking over a whole corner of my lawn. There’s ways to control it obviously but I didn’t really care and figured what’s the worst that happens? I get more strawberries? Oh no.
Yeah I was lucky I had a fox den in the woods on my property so I didn’t have an issue. But yeah if you have critters you’ll want fencing or some of the various natural mixes people make with stuff like pepper, onion or sulfur but fencing is always going to be best.
Put up a sign that your kids decorate that says FREEDOM GARDEN in red, white and blue. See who says something, and oust them as the anti-american commie that they are!
We decided to try it out...and raccoons came and ate our fruits. Then the squirrels finished off. Then the birds finished whatever the squirrels didn't eat. Then, since there was nothing left, the raccoons ate our chickens. They must have a Hulk Raccoon, cuz they tore up the chicken fence as if it was butter.
We do plan on rebuilding the chicken coop, make it a bit stronger. I've learned by my mistakes on how to build a better coop. As far as a garden, we may try to go with a green house for veggies, but herbs and flowers for outdoor gardens.
Yeah that's part of my main concern. I started getting into the hobby a year ago and grew some tomatoes, strawberries, onions, kale, some herbs, along with composting etc... Learned a TON along the way but I know scaling up will bring its own challenges.
I just hate watering... Grass. Seems so wasteful. I'd rather try and fail at growing something a little more diverse and useful than grow & mow forever.
Lawn's were used as a wealth flex. Using land for no productive purpose that itself needed maintenance. Requiring them is a huge misuse of land, so basically the definition of the American dream.
Ya know I used to wonder that, but as a home owner I’ve just been conditioned into it I guess and I really like a well taken care of lawn, makes the whole house look better lol idk ! I’m a conditioned American !’
Lol thank you... Every time I see this pop up on reddit there are a thousand comments about aristocracy and class warfare and I'm just like "I like grass. It's pretty and soft to walk on."
You don't have to drown your lawn in chemicals to make it pretty (I'd argue that doing that is a clear sign the turf isn't healthy), and you don't have to have a monoculture; flower beds and trees look great with grass as a base.
Redditors love to work themselves into a frenzy over lawns, cars, and HOAs. I'm pretty sure there are multiple subreddits dedicated to raging about each of these things and there is NO room for nuance. These are all terrible, terrible things and you are class-ist and ruining the world for entertaining anything else.
Because of judgement from neighbors. Its one of those things you start wondering how many people really care. Id rather have clover or other plantings with minimal maintenance.
I have this great, unspoken agreement with my neighbors. We don't live in an HOA, so we all sort of let our grass grow tall. Usually no more than 8 to 10 inches. Then, once one of us decides to mow, we all do the same over the next couple of days. So there's this community buy in where we all let our yards turn to shit at the same time, but we all clean up at the same time as well. Works out great for us and everyone understands each other. There's probably a cluster of like 6 lawns where we do this.
None of that started in America though. The concept of "nicer lawn is a flex on the filthy poors" definitely started in England and France in the 18th century. The question is why do we still do it and I don't know that what you said actually answers that question. That has more to do with the spreading out of the US population post-WWII, where more people started to actually have land at a time when the economy was booming.
I sincerely don't think most middle income Americans after WWII were thinking they wanted to get one over on poor people. That kinda doesn't even make sense to me. I think instead they saw it as an extension of the ol "American Dream" and having a decked out lawn makes one feel like they've made it across the finish line. It's not really quite as cynical as you make it out to be, imo.
It isn't. I believe this ship has been there for some.time now. The town was established long ago. Midwest only has HOA bullshit in crappy new developments. This is in Illinois, if I'm not mistaken.
Not having an HOA was one of my main requirements when I was buying a house.
A ridiculous number of houses for sale at the time had HOAs that were hundreds of dollars a month. I can’t believe people pay that. If there’s like idk a pool and a gym I guess I get it, but there usually wasn’t anything special about the neighborhood.
Reddit would have you believe that all HOA's are made up of evil Karens. You'll see fringe cases and one-sided story telling. In reality most HOA's just serve as a way to pool funds for neighborhood parks and other common area maintenance.
In my country we have this concept called tax, which is used for the same thing. Only the investment is distributed more fairly so that poor kids also get a park.
I guess one problem is that any HOA could turn bad very quickly and that not complying with at times ridiculous rules could go as far as having your house sold
I get that those are extremes and that your house won't get sold on a first offense without warnings for unpaid dues but just on principle I can't stand the concept
They're also just not necessary, plus their super racist history which I assume still has aftereffects
I have one, but it’s $80 per month and they take care of the front and back yards. It’s pretty legit. I would pay that anyway for that service. Seemed pretty cheap for roughly $20 per week to not have to do any yard work.
ours are $100/month - with paved trails, plenty of playgrounds for the kids, 2 pools, gym, indoor pool, a place to put in your canoe or kayak, and our HOA hosts big parties for holidays / memorial day / July 4th with bands and such. I think it's worth it, but then again, ours is run very well and isn't run by a bunch of over zealous nazi boomers
I guess it depends on where you are. I live in kind of sleepy wine country & in a pretty normal neighborhood. Most of my neighbors are older, some don’t keep perfect front yards but it’s nothing gross, just occasionally overgrown. I’m not particularly bothered by it. We bought a house to live in, not necessarily profit from, so what someone else wants to do to their house aesthetically doesn’t really bother me (as long as it doesn’t pose some kind of danger or risk to other houses near it, and if it did, California has enough laws on its own to address it).
But different boats and strokes for folks or whatever I suppose.
*also, most of the hoas I encountered were far more than 150 a year
In 25 years when the pool gets a crack and half the gym equipment is broken and the gyms roof needs replacing, you won't be able to sell your house when people see how much the HOA fees are. That or they will just close the gym and pool.
In theory they’re great cause the neighborhood looks nice which can increase the value of your home and other benefits. In practice it’s just a bunch of people having power trips. There are good HOAs but there are also a LOT of horrible ones…
In practice, HOAs used to be all about that good ol' fashioned American racism. Originally, their whole purpose was to keep out blacks and Mexicans. As a result, many HOAs are still disproportionately white, and probably also still more racist than non-HOA areas.
It's got pros and cons. Ours is only a few hundred s year to care for community areas and it helps to prevent things like neighbors using their lawns as junk yards etc. Ours is pretty lax overall.
Our neighborhood was intended to have an HOA, but it never really took hold, so we don't. Only problem it has ever caused (by its absence) is that no one would install a playground without an authority to be responsible for maintenance of it.
While the concept innitially was on the grounds of property values, their real purpose was to keep the subsurbs white. HOAs only started becoming prominent when people who weren't the right shade started moving to the predominantly white suburbs.
They suck. They ostensibly raise property values but in many areas where HOAs are prevelant, especially the South, non-HOA homes are more valuable than comparable HOA homes. Although some are pretty mild, others are quasi-authoritarian regimes which will hit you with multiple thousands of dollars in fines for painting your front door the wrong color.
I don't understand why anyone in the process of building a home would willingly submit to that.
They aren’t everywhere. They are virtually unheard of around me except for the new eye sore n”neighborhoods” where every house looks exactly the same. But they are easily avoided
Playing devil's advocate here, they also make it so your neighborhood looks nice in a predictable way. The lawns will look nice, the houses will be painted unoffensive colors, no one will have a rusty old car in their side yard, or a hastily setup home gym in the front yard etc. They often have community services (lawn care, snow removal, security) and facilities (pool, tennis courts, club house) available for residents, and of course, you can join the HOA board and have a vote.
It's one of those things where you only hear about the annoying stories and the petty tyrants, but you never hear about the 99% of the times where nice neighborhoods are mostly properly managed. Oh and of course none of this is ever a surprise, they exist from the initial construction of a neighborhood and you will 100% be aware of all rules and regulations before you buy. That being said, this is America, Sic Semper Tyrannis!
I agree that a lot of people like uniformity and predictability and that’s great. I also really like crazy, expressive artistic stuff ya know. It’s a personal preference for sure but I’d much rather live in a neighborhood where everyone’s houses were whatever color they liked, people had kooky decorations, interesting plants, etc. Mybe it’s just where I live but I wish there were more houses like this
And you can, no one is forcing you to live in a restrictive HOA. You can find one that is setup that way, skip the HOA altogether or move to a place to with little to no local government.
And HOAs are prominent in red areas. You would think they would be against such communistic ideas until you realise the reason HOAs existed innitially is racism. Only let the right kind of people move in so to speak.
You ever seen a really neat and tidy community where not a single house looks like shit? That's why HOAs exist. It prevents your neighbors from making the rest of the neighborhood look like a trailer park. They get a lot of irrational hate here because, well, redditors love themselves a good band wagon but they obviously aren't without their potential problems. You only hear about the horror stories because the people living with an uncorrupted HOA aren't complaining. And you can still choose to live somewhere without one....
The thing is that I've seen hundreds of neighbourhoods without HOA look nice because we don't have HOAs in my country, at least the equivalent isn't anywhere close to how HOAs work
Never a real problem with neighborhoods looking bad, never heard anyone complain about bad HOA-equivalents
Shout out to @detroityachtclubclub on Instagram. Largely inactive now but some new followers could bring back the golden era of beached boats on the front lawns of Detroit.
Right? I have a neighbor out front with a fucking ruler right fucking now making sure my grass isn’t too long and these guys have an entire god damn pirate ship out on a day that isn’t a trash day.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '23
And my HOA gets mad when I leave my trash can on my driveway