More drama in the neighborhood

The neighbors are after me about the plants again. Not my neighbors specifically, not those people who live next to me and are the only people who should care what is going on in my backyard, just other people who don't like that I have wildflowers and ugly vegetable plants instead of a boring grass lawn. Anyway, someone has complained, and the office left me a notice that I have violated some rule, and that the plants must be removed from the fence.

I have looked around, and about two-thirds of us have stuff grown in and around our fences. Of the people who don't have anything on the fence, about half of them don't have fences, which is another problem entirely. Two-thirds of us did not receive notices about removing the plants, just some of us, mostly those of us who aren't friends with someone at the office or on the board.

I have read the rule book, and there is no such rule against growing plants on the fence, only that tall grass growing in the fence be removed, which I don't have much problem with. There is another rule about not allowing wild trees to grow (and a great many of these appear in fences and cause problems), and I have several of those to deal with, and most of them are in the fence, and if I see one in time to cut it with the shears, I do that. I have already done my part for the year, though I did miss a couple of things last year, which is causing me problems this year, and I will probably have to borrow some power tools to deal with that. There are more of these in the fence and too close to the fence, but so far as I can see, most of them are on my neighbor's side, not mine. To be sure, I have gone around again and cut what I could.

But the notice says to remove plants, not weeds and such, just plants. The plants include honeysuckle, blackberry, iris, daylily, and something else that might be grape. I will have to go and ask if I'm being instructed to remove all of those plants.

It is already too late in the season to safely transplant anything (even if I had a place prepared for that), so if I am being told to remove all those plants, basically I'm being ordered to kill all of those plants.

I'll have to get clarification on that later today.

I had thought that maybe someone would be reasonable, and I wrote a letter pointing out that there are no such rules to be obeyed. But they are sending notices to other people regarding other rules that do not exist, ordering some people to paint their storage sheds a certain color (which is not a rule, and again they are only ordering certain people), and ordering other people to take down structures that they do not like (supposedly the entire structure has to go for not having done something a certain way, and one cannot be expected to know that is a problem after watching management construct things that same way), while directly across from them an older structure of the same sort and similar appearance was not ordered to be removed.

There was a meeting, and someone asked me to speak, and I declined, but I went to the meeting anyway. I had thought that someone else was going to speak on the subject, and I would just back up that other person, as there are rules limiting the speakers to one per subject, and I am not good at public speaking anyway. I was upset enough already. Then we were all given a paper listing the police reports in our area for the last two months, with the nature of the crime listed, the date listed, and the address listed.

Line four was about a rape. There are laws that are supposed to protect the victims identity. The laws are a bit odd. If the victim does not want her name used, it isn't allowed, and public reports will say something like Jane Doe was assaulted. However, if Jane Doe was also robbed, her real name is used to report that. So if someone really wanted to know the victim's name, you could figure it out from the report of the robbery that happened at the same time.

So if I am reading this correctly, something similar was done here. Though her name was not on the list, and the exact address was not written on that line, the line beneath that was listed as "follow up report" and the address was reported.

Most of the people I spoke to are furious. But at the meeting he was publicly thanked for providing the information. I do not know the person attacked, so I cannot say for certain that she asked for the Jane Doe bit, but it does look that way since there is no exact address for the first report, only a reference to "the block of" where the report was taken.

After the meeting, someone actually defended this man's right to distribute information that is part of public record. And it is true that this is all on public record, though it would not be arranged in such a way that it seems to point to the address of the victim.

Some days I just really hate this place. But it is home, and I don't know where else I would go.