When the yard police skip the hearing

[Tiny Human Ferret]

[BattMeals]

Standards of another neighborhood are irrelevent.

But, the photos you took paint a different picture. They not only show your property, but one can easily observe portions of your neighbors' properties.

a3.jpg shows part of a well-trimmed devil strip of the neighbor to the right.

a4.jpg shows several well maintained properties, plus nicely vertical retaining walls without weeds at the base. Unfortunately for you, their walls emphasize the tilt on the one section of wall.

Your neighbors, members of your part of town, seem to have pretty high standards of maintenance.

15 minutes of weed removal at base of walls. 5 minutes mowing. Dump the yard waste in a corner of your lot to compost. Plant a tree in the strip where the sidewalk narrows, like your neighbors. Very slow growing or shorter form are called for to avoid growing into the wires above.

-matt

[mailbox]

What defines the difference between "natural landscaping" and unkempt? How do we know the difference between a Nieman-Marcus yard and a Costco one? Do we have a gene for perceiving invasive species?...

-- [e-mail] (Charles Packer) ungoogled: mailboxATSIGNcpacker.org

[Darren Garrison]

So, are you from Ohio? I used Google to look up the never-heard-before term "devil strip", and found this:

Word Detective: Recently, a friend said that she parked her car on the "devil strip" and explained that this was the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Can you tell me what the origin of this term is? (She's from Ohio) -- Wendy Klepfer, via the internet.

Oh, well, there's your answer. People in (and from) Ohio are just plain weird. (I'm allowed to say that because I happen to live in Ohio at the moment.) Ohio boggles the mind. Our local county sheriff just got himself indicted by a grand jury on 323 felony charges, but steadfastly refuses to stop running for re-election. And there's a good chance that he'll win. I think there's something in the water around here.

What people call that strip between the street and the sidewalk turns out to depend on where they live. When I was growing up in Connecticut, we called it the "shoulder," but other terms heard around the U.S. include "tree bank" (common in Massachusetts), " berm," "right of way," "green strip" and the logical, if unglamorous, "dog walking area."

According to The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), which pays close attention to such local lingo, "devil strip" is heard almost exclusively in Northeastern Ohio, up around Akron. DARE suggests that the term may arise from the strip's legal status as a sort of "no man's land" between public and private property.

"Devil" occurs in many such folk terms, applied to plants, animals, places and things, usually those considered dangerous or unattractive, and the sense of "devil" when found in place names is often "barren, unproductive and unused." DARE notes a similar term "devil's lane," first appearing around

1872, meaning the unusable strip of land between two parallel fences, often the result of neighbors being unable to agree on a common fence. And another term, "devil's footstep," dates back to around 1860 and means "a spot of barren ground." So it's not surprising that a strip of land next to the street, unusable by anyone, would be christened the "devil strip." In fact, for Ohio, it's downright logical.

[Jean]

"devil strip", and

"devil strip" and

Can you tell me what

(I'm allowed to say

Our local county

steadfastly refuses to

think there's something in

depend on where they

other terms heard

of way," "green

close attention to such

up around Akron. DARE

"no man's land" between

I've lived in Northeastern Ohio my whole life. We call it the tree lawn. It doesn't matter if there is no tree, it's still the tree lawn. I never heard it called anything else. Maybe my world is too small.

Jean Anne

[Warren]

Growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin, everyone I knew called it "the space between the sidewalk and the street". Of course it wasn't a big topic of conversation, and people weren't obsessed with giving things nicknames back then. Eventually I did start to hear it called the "parkway" or "parkway strip".

Part of the reason for such non-concern about it was that in the City of Milwaukee, the trees in the strip were planted by, and owned by the City. The adjoining property owners were not allowed to landscape the strip in any way. They were expected to keep the grass tended: weeds picked, mowed properly, and watered. Some folks re-sodded or re-seeded the grass, but anything more than that could lead to a ticket and removal. In commercial areas, a request for pavement could be made. Carriage walks could be installed in residential areas, but they had to be maintained to the same standards as the sidewalk.

So the ordinary person only had to worry about watering and mowing the grass, and keeping the dandelions down. There wasn't much of a reason to come up with a special name for "the strip between the sidewalk and the street", or "between the sidewalk and the street" for short.

The first time I heard it given any kind of derogatory name was a few years after moving to Portland, Oregon where I heard it called the "hell strip". By that time I had noticed that it wasn't a standardized, sanitized zone like in Milwaukee, and that people landscaped them very differently, and very seldom does that mean a single tree surrounded by sod. I don't think I've ever seen anyone watering their "hell strip", either. But my subdivision doesn't have sidewalks, so it's not something I see everyday.

[Travis]

Around here we call it the parking strip even though it is against the law to park on it.

[Travis]

What is a carriage walk?

I understood that putting in streets, curbs, sidewalks, street lights, sewer lines and what not as well as houses was what constituted a subdivision.

[G Henslee]

It's a great place for my dogs to shit when we walk by Kanter's shack.

This was also a great place to snip all that useless text you leave in yoru replies.

[Warren]

A narrow concrete path between the sidewalk and the curb, often lined-up to be an extension of the walkway to the front door. It's what you once walked on to get to the door of the carriage that was parked in front of your house. They are also often found where the rear door of a transit bus would discharge passengers. (And by ordinance, the ajoining property owner is required to clear it of snow just as they are required to clear the rest of the sidewalk.)

A subdivision is nothing more than the platting of a group of lots. (In most states, 4 or more lots.) The governmental unit overseeing development in the area may require different things. In most states, either the sale of the individual lots, or building of homes can't take place until water and sewer is installed, and all lots must have access to a public street (via private easements may be allowed.) Most require easements for other utilities be included in the subdivision plan.

Depending on state laws and local ordinances and goals, widths of street easements, street lights, sidewalks, bike paths, greenspace, stormwater retention ponds, public space between the sidewalk and the curb, and landscaping are things that may or may not be included in any plan. These things can change over time. For example, my city now requires sidewalks, but when my subdivision was built in the 1970s it did not. (And the rules were far different in the 1870's, as well!)

But basically, what a subdivision is comes down to a platting of 4 or more lots.

[bailey]

And you were VERY polite to leave off the Homer-level "Doh" on your response.

Really.

Classy move.

[John R Cambron]

Lots of laughs (I hate internet acronyms), I will assume your are not a dog lover.

[Suzy O]

Ah, but there is. There's a group started here in Wisconsin some 20-30 years ago dedicated to natural landscaping called The Wild Ones. In their earlier days they fought a lot of battles over their "messy" yards. Check them out. If there isn't a chapter in your area, you might consider starting one:

O