My grandmother had a victory garden in BC during WWII. What I often see in BC towns are fruit trees and vegetables in front yards. Not all that many US homeowners have those, permitted or not.
I usually don't have comments on threads like this but, you are touching close to home. Not only because I have Canadians in the family, live only a few miles from the border, but I also sell garden produce.
At one of my gardens, I learned that the property owner was in violation of irrigation district rules by having me there. It was after I'd gardened there for quite a few years and it was the last year they owned the property and the last year for my garden there. He learned that he was in violation because he was paying a residential rate and commercial production by someone not the property owner would have changed his irrigation rate.
Now, I'm across the road where acres are irrigated for hay crops. My garden fits into that scenario. But, the point I'm trying to make is that this is a local issue and there are governmental and quasi-governmental bodies where people have made collective decisions and can unmake decisions.
Last summer I was singing the praises of the clothesline while wondering why my neighbors, almost to a person, do not use them. The person I was talking to told me that her HOA does not permit clotheslines! I had never even heard of a "HOA" 30 years ago and 50 years ago had never seen household clothing dried in any other way than on a clothesline outdoors or a clothesrack indoors!
Times change. The irrigation district rules probably date from a century ago but HOA's and all sorts of zoning rules are much more recent.
V, you are probably right about Americans turning to the authorities about neighborhood problems rather than dealing with them personally. I swear, the local police do more marriage counseling than anybody else around here!
I have a neighbor with a teenage son who dropped out of school about 18 months ago. Of course, he hasn't done anything except hang out at his father's house, a short distance away, or his mother's house, next door. He has been around for 10 years now and used to spend a lot of time in my yard looking for special rocks. The other day he came by with his "girlfriend" (God help us!) to take some pictures of her with the flowers in the front yard. (On a side note, his relationship with the girlfriend seems to have ended . . . quickly. Maybe - she had better sense than hang around with a 17-year-old dropout.)
I recently came across some troubling dropout stats and was thinking about sharing them with the kid. High school drop out rates for boys have been stuck around 11 to 12% for the last 20 years! But, here is what should be individually troubling: The median income for an adult American working man is over $40,000/year (entire pay package). So, how many men without a high school diploma reach that median income level? 7%!!
Knowing something about more traditional societies, I can assure you that in a 3rd world farming village, most anyone would be willing to give their eye teeth for a chance at a free education! Criticizing their neighbor's kid probably wouldn't be all that difficult for them either. But, I'm afraid that they don't often have a chance at a free education and providing personal guidance to the kid next door probably just comes down to the lowest common denominator.
We can slide in that direction and may be doing so. The Canadian government has far more involvement in their society and Canada has avoided some of the most recent economic problems burdening the US - their recession was much shorter and recovery has been nearly to pre-recession levels. We could applaud some of their efforts while we look more closely at our own.
Steve
