I thought that was one of the benefits of owning your own property -- you get to do with it as you please. I remember living in a neighborhood in CA that had covenants -- this just screamed for a Puritan analysis to me, but no one else seemed to notice -- that forbade you from 1) leaving your garage door open unattended for more the 1/2 hour, 2) washing your car in your drive way, 3) parking your car on your lawn, AND you had to get approval for the colors you painted your house.

I think this post and your previous one about wireless internet are revealing some MAJOR issues around private/public ownership. Or they just show how people can be jerks . . . I don't know, any votes?

My sympathies . . . I know firsthand how ridiculous neighbors can be. (Someone in our neighborhood tried to get our hoa board to forbid *kissing*)

I've seen other equally anal rules--no hanging laundry in the yard, limits for number of trees (!) and height of hedges, length of lawn not to exceed a designated number of inches--of course you guys would not ever be approved to even LOOK at property in these places (thank God!)

I love so much where I am--nobody can even see the place without negotiating a half mile of impassable terrain which is the driveway.

Wait a minute!! Wasn't it Brian who insisted that we get rid of all the junk cars??? What's up with THIS picture?

In the slum where I lived in grad school, it is customary to burn one's couch in the street after a major football victory. So the city of Morgantown passed an ordinance against indoor furniture on one's porch--hoping that students would be too lazy or trashed to haul it out of the house. Didn't work.
In Earlville we don't have zoning, except against farm animals (unless your property is grandfathered, which ours is). Someone came around wanting us to sign a petition, and we refused. Now, I wouldn't mind some zoning that would prohibit a 7-11 going in next door, but I'll be damned if I'll agree to zoning that prohibits trailers, unmowed grass, junked cars, and orange houses. What all that has to do with is social class--period. One of our neighbors has junked some kind of hot tub behind his garage--and in full view of our back yard. I don't like it, but I'd a lot less like imposing my personal taste and social class pretensions on him.

Here's what's up, mom. *Yours* WERE junk cars, sitting in the soil, dripping whatever crap into the ground, with no one planning to do anything productive with any of them. Large yard ornaments, as it were.

Plus, you live in a beautiful wilderness, where several extra cars are highly unslightly.

For us to have several extra cars parked in a driveway, all of which have TIRES and which can DRIVE and move and stuff, and which bring Brian hours of happiness and hobbyness, is what is UP WITH THAT.

Do NOT get snippy with me on MY BLOG, mom. Remember, the blogger is always right. :)

Screw the zoning dude. You are fine neighbors, and I am not just saying that because you make killer raspberry bars. This is Oswego County, not Beverly Hills. They're motor vehicles, for god's sakes, not something vile and contemptible such as pro-Bush signs.

You know damn well who's whining to the zoning board. Shoot him in the groin and bury him in the garden!

One man's trash is another man's treasure.