Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for September 10, 2023

A good reaction to the Harpies On Alert association

Dil’s family has the power.

Never argue with the owner of a trebuchet.

What’s a lawn gnome adorned with feathers? A gnome-de-plume!

Since the trebuchet is conveniently parked on the driveway, not the lawn, it can be passed off as a conveyance.

touche’ to the trebuchet

The doormat’s not on the lawn. Fight them all the way to the Supreme Court.

So that’s a yes to the gnome.

Adjudication is a fantastic word for a preschooler.

So funny!

I’ve got a John Deere lawn tractor perched atop a large rock. That would really tick off any HOA. I have a big yard and it is off to the far side of my driveway. I’ve had many compliments …..someone even tried to steal it this Spring, only to find out it doesn’t roll and it doesn’t steer. Joke was on them!

Nice I think I can hear the “Goofy Yell” from here.

The guy before him hasn’t been found yet….

Dill’s happy with the memory that it wasn’t him.

I want to live with Dill’s family.

Brother One: “Incoming!”

Brother Two: “Outgoing!”

I would have thought Marcus’s mother would have installed a bronze historical marker reading “Childhood Home of Marcus.”

And that’s the way to deal with an HOA.

Wish I had a trebuchet when I lived in an HOA.

If you would just stick to dog made lawn objects no one would trespass.

They lured him into the trebuchet with house color sample chips that were against HOA code.

Reminds me of the Pink Floyd Dingo tune “We don’t need no Adjudication … all in all it’s just some kitsch on the lawn”

And so it should be with all HOA petty Fascists!

I live not far from where Richard Thompson did.(and where he placed the Cul de Sac neighborhood.) In many of the developments around here, there are artifacts of older neighborhoods— farmhouses, old stores or churches, remnants of centuries old roads, etc— that get enveloped by new housing.

And sometimes, those older homes are still occupied by descendants of the same families that lived there for generations. I’m betting that Dill’s family is one of those.

In many ways, those ‘heritage’ families adhere to older laws. Running through a nearby development, we had a dirt road that the home owners on either side wanted paved, but the county wouldn’t because the owner of the remnant property in the middle actually owned the road bed. He didn’t want any paving done because, he said, putting in curbs would alter the drainage.

So the dirt road existed there for almost 20 years. You could drive down smooth paving, bump down onto the dirt road for the distance of maybe 200 yards, then bump back up onto smooth paving again.

(Eventually, the heritage homeowner died, his kids sold the property and the road got paved.)

My own suburban neighborhood is so old it doesn’t have an HOA. We do have county zoning ordinances to follow, and those are mostly enforced by a division of the local sheriff’s department. You can’t park trailers or boats in front of your house, for example, and no parking of cars on the grass. My husband ran foul of that ordinance when he decided to weld our mail box to his old Datsun station wagon and park it in the grass beside the driveway entrance. It’s a car, the enforcer argued. It’s a mailbox stand, hubby said. They went back and forth until hubby argued, what’s the difference between it and the guy’s mailbox stand down the street? He’s got his mailbox welded to a pot belly stove. Hubby won. We had that car as a mailbox stand for almost a year, until someone made an offer to buy the station wagon that hubby couldn’t refuse.

Dill’s front yard looks like the one across the street (minus the trebuchet) from me!

Lol, bet the HOA never tried that again

HOAs are such @nal retentive control freaks.

Too bad Mr. Thompson is gone. I think a Dill family spin-off would’ve been just as interesting

My front yard, and my back yard for that matter, get visited by the DC inspectors regularly. Seems “excessive vegetation entire property” is a no-no. Then they found out it was all trees and gave up.

A strip I really LOVED!!…though not till the last panel!

See? The Wedekind Brothers’ Trebuchet does serve a useful purpose sometime! Overly restrictive HOAs must be opposed!

The last guy’s lot sorta of reminds me of where I grew up (no rules). There were a lot of Fords up on cinder blocks as yard decorations.

. . .and this is why we didn’t buy the house in the neighborhood association, but they are just three houses down.