Free Talk Live

Neatly trimmed lawns and fixed picket fences could soon be the order of the day for not only homeowners in New York, but across America, if they want to avoid hefty fines and even jail time. In January, Linda Ruggles, 53, from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was sentenced to ten days in jail after failing to pay a $480 fine for a having a messy yard. A month later, a Florida man was reportedly sentenced to a year and one day in jail after he failed to remove litter from the front of his house.

I should mention that the community comes to her aid after 6 days. And that her neighbors are originally the reason she was fined in the first place.

SANFORD, Fla.— A man who defied officials for more than 13 years by refusing to remove airplane parts and other junk from his yard was sentenced to three years in prison.

Alan Wayne Davis, 49, had been placed on house arrest in September after serving nearly a year in prison for illegal dumping and creating and maintaining a public nuisance.

On Monday, a judge sentenced Davis to three years in prison for violations of his house arrest, including failing to return home from work on time and keeping part of a World War II fighter plane in his yard.

GUANAJUATO, Mexico — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Mexico to stay the course in an admittedly "messy" war against drug cartels, saying Monday that the Obama administration will help with new controls on the flow of American guns across the border.

"That's not what we want to see in a front yard," said Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski.

Why? The city is pointing to a code that says a front yard has to have suitable, live, plant material. The big question is what's "suitable?"

"If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster's dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what's common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers," the city bureaucrat said.

Anderson, who grew up on Holmes Mesa south of Rifle, bought the lot and home where he lives in 1990, he said. Over the following decade, he parked various vehicles and built sheds in the yard.

Anderson maintains that the things in his yard are not junk, but items of value that he has collected over the years on the chance he might have a use for them some day.

“Ultimately the town will own my property. They will steal it from me,” Anderson complained.

The Michigan woman facing 93 days in jail for front yard gardening now faces new charges for having unlicensed dogs.

Johnny Ramsey, the 79-year-old Korean War veteran who collected and sold junk to pay for medications for his ailing wife, said just minutes before court Thursday evening: “If I have to go to jail, I guess I am ready.” An hour later, Ramsey left a Clover courtroom in shackles – sentenced to 30 days in the York County jail for not cleaning up his yard eight months after a judge ordered him to get rid of the junk.

Your trash is another's treasure. Don't put your fellow man at risk by leaving old living room furniture on your yard.