Photo of the Day: HOA, Come And Get Me

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF50mm f/1.8 | Setting: f/1.8, 1/5000th sec, ISO 100

BOO HOO - No adventures this weekend. Except for the adventure of hauling a garbage can out to the front yard and pulling weeds with the letter from the Kempton Crossing HOA echoing in my head. "PLEASE TRIM THE TREE BY THE STREET LIGHT.  The Association is considering a fine for these offenses!"

I've taken care of the tree already; a big palo verde that's been bugging me for months as I didn't quite know where to start with it.  Poor thing was way out of control.  The HOA took care of my concern with their letter: start by trimming it, Mr. Stephens, lest you incur a fine.

I trimmed until after dark the week before we were to leave for a long weekend to Mexico, with the shame of an adolecent who'd been told, "You can't go until you get that tree trimmed."  We're right on the corner, so every time one of my neighbors drove by I could feel their eyes on me, I could sense their guffaws rumbling inside their sedans and minivans. That was a few weeks ago now.  Since then, it's dumped rain.  On my yard.

Historically, January is the rainiest month of the year in Arizona.  Little 'ol Chandler received 2.76" of rain in January this year. I have a few thousand lush green weeds growing in my yard to show for it.  When you see the weeds popping up through the rocks, you tend to go, "Ah, I need to get out the weed killer and spray a bit."  But that's as far as that notion goes.

When you start to see the one or two weeds right by the front door and you ask your wife, "Hey, when did you plant this tree?" the two of you will enter a discussion about said tree: What tree? I didn't plant a tree - THAT TREE, and someone's hung a damn tire swing in it - That's not a tree you fool it's a weed, and there's no swing. It's time to pull weeds.  Life in suburban Sonoran Desert.

My weed project exploded on me.  I tackled the front yard and had it polished off in about 45 minutes.  I felt good, too. I found a few things, though.  Most notably, I discovered a leak in my sprinkler line.  So I raked the gravel back, rolled out the wheelbarrow, and dug down to the PVC line.  You should avoid digging in your suburban yard as much as possible.  Just under the surface, you find all sorts of odd things.  Beer cans, bricks and construction detritus - I swear, it gives you pause about the quality of work that went into the walls that keep your family sheltered.  I found my leak, easy enough, but I also found a secondary mystery sprinkler line missing a sprinkler head.

So I tested it by turning on my valves one at a time.  Nothing.  So what do I do?  Under rug swept, that's what. I buried it without so much as a goodbye.  You can make a movie about this stuff: Harry Potter and The Strange Mysterious Land Below The Surface of Suburbia.  Keep out.

And then . . . and then Brooke had a problem with the lawn mower out back (I hate lawn.  Grass.  Mowing.  Broken lawn mowers.) I set about to clean the carburator, dickered around with trying to get it to prime again, discovered a vacuum leak which I solved by torquing the the screws even tighter.  Sure, that won't haunt me in a couple of weeks . . .