Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The city then sent out code enforcement.

City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.

According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), thousands of property owners built homes, decks, gazebos and patios on land that belongs to Ameren Missouri's Bagnell Dam and Osage hydroelectric project, which the agency regulates. So FERC issued an order stating that all of the so-called nonconforming structures must be removed.