Today our house received a citation because we haven't mowed our lawn often enough. Yes, seriously. For some perspective, it's been a little less than two weeks since we mowed our front yard. We've been getting a ton of rain, so the grass is growing like crazy right now.
The inspector was super polite, so I have no hard feelings toward the city. He said it was so borderline, that he had to measure it with a ruler and then found that we did, indeed, have a few blades of grass over eight inches of length. I wonder if a subcommittee on grass blade length had to be formed by the city to determine this magic number. lol
Anyway, it turns out the city itself doesn't really care, but we had a busybody neighbor report us, so they are obligated to investigate. No doubt it was the same neighbor that complained to our HOA about our security camera near the front door when we installed it (which, btw, there is no city or HOA rule against having).
The inspector told us that he had been receiving tons of lawn complaints like this. He thinks its due to newly unemployed people staying at home and having nothing better to do. Personally, I think it's more probably due to people trying to assert some small form of mitigation of property value decline since they can't control the bubble burst. Because, you know, an occasional few long blades of grass on your neighbor's yard makes a huge difference!
So how sad is that? Seriously, people. Get a life.
If you see a cess pool of a pond on someone's property, an insect or rodent breeding ground, or some other health hazard, yes, report that property! But if somebody didn't have time to mow the lawn last weekend, STFU and get a freaking life.
I wonder what our busybody neighbors will think when we mow our lawn so low that all the grass dies. See -- I don't really care what it looks like. But they obviously do. There's no ordinance against dead grass. ;-)