FABRICATION FILE / THE HOAWAY
A jurisdictional dispute with sprinklers
A prohibited garden gnome becomes a mobile lawn. The committee discovers that the problem now has a hitch.
The association objected to the customer's garden gnome. The customer objected to the association's authority over a six-inch man holding a mushroom. By the time Terry received the call, both parties had used the phrase ‘principle of the matter’ often enough to support financing.
The brief was simple: put the entire front yard on a trailer. The customer had invested six years in the grass and felt the neighborhood no longer deserved to look at it.
Transfer the asset
Terry built a lawn deck with irrigation, a mailbox and a reinforced anchor for the disputed gnome. The customer requested a flagpole. Terry asked which flag. The customer said he hadn't decided, but it would definitely be one that needed explaining.
The first revision added a white picket fence. The second made it one inch taller. The third added a small ruler permanently displaying the extra inch. Engineering began tracking resentment separately from weight.
The customer asked whether the trailer could be parked diagonally. Terry referred him to the portion of the drawing marked ‘entirely your problem after pickup.’
Demonstrate compliance
At the next meeting, the customer announced that the gnome was no longer in his yard. It was on a vehicle. The committee requested photographs, then clarification, then a brief recess.
Someone suggested the mobile lawn was still landscaping. Someone else said that if it had wheels, the parking rules applied. A third member asked whether the mailbox meant it was a separate residence.
The secretary began a new page. Terry's customer considered this a successful field test.
Evaluate the result
The association formed a trailer subcommittee. The customer volunteered to chair it. His first proposal was a designated parking area with water service.
The original gnome remains attached to the deck, gazing over turf that now requires insurance and its own storage plan.
Asked whether the project was worth thirty-two thousand nine hundred dollars, the customer said nobody was telling him where to put his lawn anymore. His wife, who now parks in the street, has requested Terry's number.