A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Why are people still moving into areas managed by the HOA? Even considering land value/ safety, it doesn't seem worth it. It seems likely that some rich white ass hole will jump your fence, punch your kid in the face, and then jump the fence again and call the cops for assault. The power tripping is insane.
As a non-American, HOAs fucking baffle me. It genuinely seems like legal fascism. Like why the fuck would I let some Karen dictate what I can and cannot do with my house?
lack of choice
Most neighborhoods have HOAs nowadays. It can be hard to avoid.
Entire neighborhoods are built with an HOA already pre-installed by the developers, with no way out of them AFAIK beyond basically dismantling the company that manages the HOA (that you funded by buying into the neighborhood).
Housing is extremely predatory in the US, and that's not even getting into ever increasing home values being a major part of the stock market.
There’s one way, but probably depends on local laws. In my neighborhood, the actual homeowners can take over the HOA once a certain percentage of homes built are occupied. The problem is, the builder keeps on building and building so we never get to that point. I can’t wait for our neighborhood to kick out the HOA management company.
HOAs, like most everything else in America that sucks, is rooted in racism.
It's a way of keeping...undesirables...out of the neighborhood. Or at least pressure them to leave.
True "as long as it hurts the other guy more" energy.
I couldn't get a house in my price range without one, unfortunately.
Because one (obviously not all) of the problems that HOAs were created to solve is still around: terrible neighbors. It's not always an option to pick the best neighbors when you're looking at a home, and HOAs at least let you quickly see that your neighbor isn't going to be dumping sewage or old rusted machines in your yard. They also can be a quicker, more accessible route than going through with an individual lawsuit if your neighbor does begin acting like an ass. I've had to deal with bad neighbors in rural and suburban settings, and I would honestly pick HOA over that.
I wouldn't live in an HOA neighborhood if I could avoid it, but I also wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood if I could avoid it. Give me a large, spacious, well-insulated apartment in an urban area and I'd be happy.
Leaves go away by themselves quickly, in my experience. It's worm food. Worms are good for soil health. It also feeds the plants and can act as insulation for roots of shrubbery during cold snaps. Yes, if it is a particular thick and wet layer, it can rot the grass underneath. I have seen green thumb people spread it around their lawn and shove it under their bushes. But I guess if you are going for constant golf course style, you have to buy other nutrient and manage the leaves. But golf lawns are ugly.
They break up a lot quicker if you run over them with a mower, which can also spread out the bits leaving a tidier looking lawn, thus keeping the HOA happy (maybe)
HOAs get a lot of hate, but the last one I lived in actually recommended mowing the leaves instead of bagging them.
By far the best option. Putting them in bags takes forever, though they can then be reused for compost and the likes.
Not sure what the other commenter is talking about though. Unless they have like a single tree or something, I fail to see how the grass wouldn’t rot. There’s always this one guy in town who doesn’t clean it up and it smells awful down the street.
I'm doing an experiment. This year I raked a bunch of leaves next to a tree trunk last fall. They're still there, this spring.
Sounds like you have a compost pile. The tree is probably alright with that.
Depends on the leaf. Oak?
Yeah, mostly oak. Maybe some maple from neighbor trees. And maybe a few other species. But mostly oak.
Yeah oak breaks down slowly. You can mow it in fall to break it down faster.
But a better question is just.. where do you actually need to rake? Obviously more wild/leaves = better, and you've already figured out where the leaves want to settle. Is that okay there? Or is it a used part of your lawn that you should just rake?
They like it there and have decided to remain.
Well yeah, peobably got too cold for them to rot they were refridgerated all winter. Of course i dont know exactly where you live or what the weather is like but give it a couple months.
I'm just lazy and haven't mowed my yard since spring of 2023. It's about time to more again and I'll probably mow over them this week. I hate yard work, probably because I was forced to do it as soon as I was old enough to use a rake.
i feel the same way about mowing the parts of my yard i don't tread in. something else needs that for habitat.
Mom spent 30+ years raking the leaves out from under the bushes. That shit turned into solid clay and choked all of it to death. Entire house and backyard ringed in shrubs, 4-hour job to trim it, all dead.
Old lady down the street obsessively rakes her yard and burns the leaves. Guess what it looks like? No foot or vehicular traffic, still a wasteland.
Another old guy across the street from her does the same. His entire front yard looks like Arrakis.
Blessed be thy Maker and his water.
Bless the coming and going of Him.
May his passage cleanse the world.
May he keep the world for his people
Is it all or nothing?
As in, would raking only when it’s bad and leaving some leaves around better than full cleanups?
I still don't understand why keeping the leaves around is such a big topic in lemmy. Why, just why? Where did it come from?
it came from ugly ass monocrop lawns
And from the drastic collapse of insect populations.
And from the fact that 2 stroke engines, most often used in leaf blowers, emit more pollution per hour than a semi truck.
Look I'm just too lazy to do anything about them and I don't mind them being there.
You probably don’t have a lot of trees or the smell would keep you up at night.