Skip to main content

You Get What You Pay For




The monthly fee that I pay to the homeowners association is responsible for snow removal, road maintenance, lawn mowing and landscaping of common areas. There is a contract with a company that does this work. I have been told they were hired because they submitted the lowest bid. This past fall they did some tree and shrub trimming


                                    



I wonder if they could have made things look any uglier with just a bit more effort?

                                            

This tree is completely dead.  The sagging and fallen branches were interfering with the lawn tractor's path so they just didn't mow a chunk of lawn all summer but the brush that grew up was more appealing than this.

*****

This month a professional tree service came and cut down the arbor vitae that had been planted along the back of the three buildings on my street. They were impinging on the buildings. Apparently whoever planted them did not take into account the fact that plants will grow. I have a whole lot more light coming my office windows but I miss seeing the birds flitting in and out of those trees.


All that's left behind my place.


Comments

  1. ooh perfect just enough so that you can trip on it. :-)

    My HOA is clueless yet acts like nazi's. I will never ever live with an HOA again if it can be helped. plowing is questionable around these parts. Someone needs to tell them the snow only moves if you put the blade down on the ground.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Isn't that ridiculous!
    My kids live in a co-op townhome in Vancouver. They have a board, and we quite involved.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That looks like the job my power company does. Always hated the results from the lowest bidder.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Margaret -- I will avoid an HOA if I move again. A little power can go to the heads of some people.

    Jenn -- The fee keeps going up but the quality of the work gets worse each year, I swear.

    Patti -- Lots of companies will throw out the highest bid and the lowest and I can see the reasoning behind a policy like that.

    ReplyDelete
  5. They're going to leave the stumps like that? Hmmm...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I appreciate readers' comments so much. You don't even always have to agree with me.

Popular posts from this blog

It's TIme

 It's been a while since I have posted anything and even my reading your posts is falling by the wayside. I am in Florida now. I have a yard where little attention was spent on landscaping for the past years so I am slowly and (somewhat) methodically addressing that. I also volunteer to work at the pollinator garden and the edible garden I helped install at the UU grounds and I took over the volunteer job of cleaning out the overgrown community garden by my neighborhood mailboxes. The neighbor who was doing that got sick and could no longer attend to it. It's a bigger job than I'd thought at first -- not only overgrown with weeds, but the plants that are wanted there are in life and death competition for each others' spaces. And two walks a day, morning and evening, so Levi can keep up with addiction to canine social media and a daily rousing came of stick or ball midday take up another chunk of my time. I have a weekly meditation group that I co-facilitate, and my own ...

Life Goes On

There is nothing like a visit from the grand children to remind one that life goes on.  I spent Friday night at my daughter's and then brought the kids back home with me.  I did not get to see so much of them this past summer and it was a birthday gift to my daughter (who just turned 40!) to have a couple of days to herself. She probably spent them in her son's room playing Lego StarWars.  Dane tried to teach me how to play this video game--a hopeless task if ever there was one.  "Concentrate, Grandma!  You have to concentrate!"  I do have a hard time with sustained concentration lately, but in this case I had no clue what it was that needed concentration.  He finally took the controls away from me (thank-you!). It's amazing how long he can amuse himself at my house being out side on a scooter or helping me in the yard, especially if it involves a hose.  Inside, they both sit and draw or craft for hours.  Just before bed, Dane did say, "N...

Morning Coffee

As a rule, I drink two cups of coffee in the morning. Gone are the days when I drank coffee all day and even had a cup after dinner--and never decaf.  When I was a working mom, the sleep deprivation made it kind of necessary in order to function.  These days, if I had a cup of coffee after lunch, I would be awake all night. But I do like my morning coffee.  Now I mix regular and decaf.  I can't quite seem to kick caffeine entirely. Wednesday morning there was no milk, no white stuff of any kind.  Thursday morning my sone left a note on the coffee maker--carafe was cracked.  Desperate times! I was not able to find a replacement carafe.  At least I was not able to dedicate my entire day to finding one.  So I bought a Mr. Coffee--a little five cup one for around 15 dollars.  I was thinking that I never drink more than two cups so why not. What I forgot about is that the manufacturers of coffee makers definition of a cup is, at best, ha...