Dad’s are EXTREMELY particular about their yards.

I cannot tell you how many times my Dad felt the need to explain to me the proper mowing technique, even after I had already been mowing the grass for 4 years.

And if you want to know the exact right way to spray weedkiller onto plants? I’m your guy. Side note: pretty sure that weedkiller was seriously poisonous to my young developing lungs. Yikes.

So it was only understandable that when this Dad was told his tree wasn’t in compliance with the HOA’s rules, he found the pettiest way possible to get back at them!

Check it out!

HOA didn’t like the 3 inches of our tree on the sidewalk

I’m living with my parents temporarily and came home to my dad bitterly putting on his jacket and boots.

He’s not the type to express his frustration so I asked what’s going on.

Apparently the HOA, who has only sent us a letter once in the 12 years we’ve lived here sent one today nitpicking our yard.

More specifically, their problem was with the Christmas tree in OP’s yard…

Our Christmas tree was 3 inches on the sidewalk and was a “hazard” to pedestrians walking space.

It also apparently didn’t align with the tree maintenance code that doesn’t allow overgrowth onto streets or sidewalks unless 8 feet tall.

This also affected the tree across from the Christmas tree since the thick branch we cut out was 7.8 feet tall over the sidewalk.

And the HOA threatened that if they didn’t get their tree aligned with neighborhood code, it was gonna cost them!

We recently got a new head of the HOA who’s trigger-happy to “fix” the neighborhood since the old HOA President was pretty laid back during their last years.

The letter was pretty passive aggressive too with specific measurements, direct quotes from the code, and a speech about keeping the neighborhood nice.

I think my dad was even more mad because he’s been working on the yard all week to make it nice for the winter and had just the Christmas tree left.

So he told me “well if they want it done that fast and are going to be hounding me the moment its overgrown then I don’t wanna risk it becoming a problem over the winter.”

But OP Dad had an even pettier solution to their petty request!

So instead of just fixing the three inches, we sloppily removed any branch hanging over the sidewalk, leaving a giant hole in the branches and a giant foliage overhang.

We measure the overhang, it’s 8.3ft. In his words “it ain’t pretty but it’s within code.”

No expected rebuttal from HOA as they haven’t sent another letter and this was 3 weeks ago.

My dads only concern is the tree having a dead patch but he’s been meaning to get different tree since that one is coming close to being as tall as our house.

It is also way too much upkeep for him and his full time job.

Plus he’s getting a bit older which makes the outdoor work harder for him now.

I’m sure the head of HOA was regretting haggling over 3 inches, especially when it ruined the perfect image he was trying to create throughout the neighborhood!

I almost feel bad for him! Almost.

Reddit had mixed feelings on OP’s compliance, but many were nonetheless reminded of their own encounters with HOAs.

But more people came to the comments to say that the HOA was well within their rights to get OP’s Dad to cut the tree.

And even the HOA-haters had to admit that they actually did have a good reason for their demand.

But finally, this user said it wasn’t the request that was the problem, it was the way they made the request.

“My tree is blocking the path? How dare they ask me to cut it?”

When you read it that way, it does seem kind of ridiculous!

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.