Toc Is Reprimanded Yet Again

A refresher about my last encounter with the gardeners back in 2008.
http://toccatamundi.blogspot.com/2008/02/hall-monitors.html

A tree is ailing at my mother's condo. The Wandering Neighborhood Gestapo (WNG) makes its daily rounds under the guise of environmentalism. What they really do is check and see if any resident has dared plant a new plant without filling out the forms, submitting a request to the Architectural Committee, and getting approval--which is never granted.

Like the rest of the country, the HOA is feeling the financial pinch and there isn't a lot of money for new landscaping on any scale. I feel my mother's property has gotten the short end of the stick in the communal landscaping general plan so I offered to pay and plant APPROVED plants on her property.

I WAS TURNED DOWN!!

It seems that if people are allowed to use their own money then someone might have a condo that looks better than someone else's! Did these small-potatoes terrorists take on-line classes at the Lenin Landscaping and Annoying Everyone site??? I offered to buy a few rhododendrums, azaleas and other "matching" plants and plant them myself. Apparently this would mean I would be violating the egalitarian nature of the HOA! I wouldn't be offering to do this if the property didn't already looked like the poor stepchild. Logic is useless with this crowd.

All this is prelude to reporting that I dared to speak to the traveling iSpies doing their snooping. I saw that the owner of the Landscaping Company was accompanying them on their rounds and I wanted to ask about the tree in distress. The poor man was obviously cowed by the Committee because he pretended not to understand English and answered "No habla Ingles" in the most awful Spanish ever uttered. Sigh.....bullies are the same everywhere and they had him by the delicate parts.

I must admit I called out from the deck that I knew he spoke English and that he looked as Mexican as Prince William. By now the WNG was getting loaded for bear.

Sure enough, a week later I got a letter from their lawyers threatening me with liability if any of the gardeners quit and reminded me that I had already been warned not to speak to any of the gardeners.

I guess they didn't get my response about my First Amendment rights.
I wonder if Home Depot has any rhododendrons in yet?

The Role of Community Organizers

"Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus." 
--Mt 27:20

"And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was wont to do for them. And he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"

For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the one whom you call the King of the Jews?"

And they cried out again, "Crucify him."  
--Mk 15: 8-13