Funny Memories

We had dinner with some people we know on Sunday and talking to them brought back memories of odd, ridiculous or infuriating stuff that happened here in Utah. The ones I will share now have to do with the city zoning people.

Even though Utah is the second dryest state, no one here pays much attention or plans for the dry conditions. Everyone wants a lush green lawn and bountiful plants and flowers and that includes the city. When we first moved here there were prohibitions against xeriscaping the parking strip but some people started to complain about the waste of water so the city modified the rules to read that 30% of the parking strip had to be vegetation, not necessarily grass as it once was. The city relies on neighbors to inform on their neighbors if they don't like what your parking strip looks like and someone reported my son's strip to the inspectors. He asked me to be there when he met them after he got the notice that he wasn't in compliance. We had measured the strip for square footage, figured out what 30% would be given the plants' natural spread, and transplanted a variety of plants from my yard that I knew would do well with very little upkeep like daylilies and lavender.

The inspectors came out and right away they told us there wasn't enough vegetation. We showed them the statute which they claimed to know already, told them that we knew that we had planted 30% of the strip at which point the male of the crew said, "How do you know that?"

My son answered that it was elementary math and the guy got really huffy, and said, "Well, I don't like how it looks so you will have to change it". My son, the philosophy major, said that the language of the statute was pretty clear and needed to be objective rather than subjective. The city man said, "What's that mean?" When my son told him he said, "I didn't come here to be insulted." My son said his intent was not to insult but to ascertain just how the judgments were made. The guy got even redder and asked to see receipts for the plants that were in the ground. For what reason he wouldn't say and when we told him that we had done what all gardeners do by sharing our plants he told us that would never do--that we had to have receipts from a garden store or a statement from a garden store that we had purchased the plants. Of course I had nothing of the kind since my plants were multi-generations old, but I did have a decent relationship with some people down at the largest nursery in town. The pair of morons from the city said they would be back the next day and if I didn't have what was requested, they would begin levying fines against my son.

I went home and did two things. The first was I wrote an email to my city council person telling him pretty much what I laid out above and also telling him that if he didn't rein in his minions, I was going to send a letter to the editor. Then I went down to Western Gardens with a list of the plants I had transplanted to get some documentation. As I knew they would, they wrote a pretty complete rundown of how big the plants got at maturity, what their lateral spread was, how quickly they propagated, and finally attested to the fact that I had purchased the original plants there even though it was more than twenty years in the past.

The pair came by my son's house the next day still in very bad moods, sure that we were making fun of them in our copious free time, and took my documentation with far less than natural grace and good will. Then they told my son that they would drive by every year to make sure that the plants were growing as promised and that if not, the fines would be retroactive.

Now I am not saying that this could only happen in Salt Lake City, but it is the sort of stuff that goes on all the time here so it leaves a bad taste behind.