Honestly, from reading your posts over the years, I’m amazed you live in a neighborhood covered by an HOA.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, that an unreconstructed southerner would knowingly and willingly submit to the tyranny of an HOA is mind boggling.
I don’t know who you are anymore.
(obviously since I didn’t know who you were before)
Making the best of a bad situation. All things are a compromise, and to get the location and house that I wanted I had to buy where I did. The good news for me is that the HOA is not mandatory in my neighborhood, although the self-important jackasses who run it would like to make it so. That doesn't keep the malicious busybodies who have nothing better to do from sneaking around trying to find things to get people in trouble with. I suspect that the guy I caught on disk was trying to see if my project car had a license plate so that he could turn me in to the county if it didn't.