I live in Belmont Country Club, Ashburn (outside of the gates). The community is known for discriminating against the homeowners who reside outside 'The Almighty Black Iron Gates', as we pay lower monthly HOA fees, (to the tune of $270), which in turn, gets us less attention with our community's concerns, and more scrutiny on our properties.
I have lived in this community for over 10 years, and have faithfully paid my monthly dues, without fail, never missing a payment.
Back in the summer of 2014, I was using a lawn service, to treat my flower beds for weeds. As a result, there was an adverse effect with the treatment in eliminating the weeds in one of my beds.
The flower bed developed very thick, very stubborn thistle weeds, which became painstakingly difficult to remove. I tried numerous times to remedy the situation, which eventually got out of hand. Several notices were received by me from my HOA to resolve my weed issue. Unfortunately, my endless attempts at removing those pests were unsuccessful. That Fall 2014, I received a nasty gram regarding the weeds, and was assessed a covenants violation fee of $500!
I found this fee to be outrageously exorbitant, and atrocious. And, was certainly not planning on paying such a ridiculous covenants violation assessment. Also, around the time of this notice, I suffered a great personal loss. My mother passed suddenly of a heart attack. Her passing was emotionally devastating and crippling. Frankly, the HOA violation covenants issue pertaining to my weeds was the last thing on my mind. In addition, my Father (at that very time), needed my assistance 24/7 with his Parkinson's Disease. I was living two weeks out of the month, going to and from Ashburn to Fairfax, to give my Father around the clock care.
Time quickly passed while caring for my Father, and winter then set in. Eventually the weeds had died. There was no longer a weed issue. . While caring for my Father around the clock, I completely overlooked the covenants violation, but never forgot the issue. My intentions were to eventually address the astronomically high assessment with Belmont Country Club's Board of Executives.
Once I was able to catch my breath in getting assistance with care for my Father, I planned to address the situation with the HOA board during one of their evening meetings in February 2015. I attended the meeting, presented my case, apologized for the delay in addressing the situation, and assured The Board this would not be an issue in the future.
I also explained to The Board my living situation. Being absent for two weeks per month from my property, to care for my Father with Parkinson's at his home in Fairfax, made it difficult to rectify and resolve the issue, as I was at my home half the time. In addition, during the meeting, I addressed to The Board, my initial negligence for the lack of remedying the situation, due to my Mother's devastating sudden passing. I explained to The Board that I was highly distracted over my Mother's sudden loss, and was in a deep, and long grieving process.
To my surprise, The Board did not dismiss the case and showed not one ounce of sympathy. Also, because the violation fee was not paid back in September 2014, upon receipt of their notification, I was assessed an addition $400 in late fees. Thus making the total violation fee of having weeds in one of my flower beds $900+!
From there, I requested The Board revisit their decision, and asked that they show a little mercy towards my situation.
I was blatantly ignored, and dismissed. I requested to meet with the board again, and was denied my request.
A month later I received a certified letter from the HOA's attorney, suing me for $900, plus another $375 in legal fees!
At that point, I contacted their attorney's office, and explained my situation to the law firm's Paralegal. She seemed a bit understanding, and sympathetic to my situation. She suggested I submit a letter with the chain of events leading up to this point. I did as she instructed, and sent the letter certified. The letter included documentation of several lawn service visits to remedy the weed situation (but in this case made it worse), and in addition, brought up my own several attempts at removing these stubborn weeds.
As mentioned, the letter was sent certified. I called & confirmed the firm had received my letter.
I was told by the Paralegal my case would be further reviewed, and that I would be hearing back from the attorney in charge of my case shortly.
I never received a return call. And, thought no news is good news.
I figured the firm concluded the case to be absurd, and believed it was dismissed, based on my several attempts to remedy the issue.
More importantly, the issue was no longer an issue.
Just recently, I received a notice from the law office stating I owe $1800 due by the end of February 2016, and that there is a lien on my property!
I'm shocked, disappointed to say the least, and very disgruntled.

Thank you for reading this entire story up to this point. Any feedback, whether good, (or maybe not what I want hear), would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

Lets face it, HOAs IMO are the worst part of owning a home. I don't know what else you can do besides trying to maybe get the dropped to the original fine.

I think if you can prove you tried to fix the issue but it didn't work then maybe they will let you off somewhat.

I found that if YOU bug the HOA about your issues, they will get annoyed. and just want you to go away. I mean call them everyday think of any dumb question you can ask, and bug the shit out of them.

My HOA said i had a dent in my garage door. I brought a picture of my garage door and asked them where the dent was (I could honestly not find one). They looked around the picture and said there it is. They actually found a small dent, so small you have to search for it before finding it. I waited a week, took the exact same picture and said it was fixed. They said thank you and took me off the naughty list. (WTF)

HOAs Suck!

The only way I know to ensure that weeds do not take over in your garden is to don a pair of leather gardening gloves, get a couple of lawn clipping recycling bags at Home Depot, take a spade or a mattock out there once each week and pull/dig all the weedy plants up as soon as they pop up, then rake the flower beds over so only soil and the permitted flowers are showing in them. Thistle seeds have feathered parachute appendages that let them float and drop down anywhere on the winds, and birds love them and pass them around after eating them everywhere, so no matter how much poison you spread, after a couple of rains new seeds will land and sprout.
I lived in an Ashburn townhouse for awhile and spent 4 hours a week in the garden doing all the yard work myself, so I know what you are going through.I composted all my clippings in a big plastic trash can mixed with lime and a little soil, then in the winter mixed the composted stuff with new bags of soil and spread it back on the flower beds. If you have a lawn company that brings in mulched soil in the spring, they often get this from agricultural areas and farms that compost their manure, so the stuff is going to be full of weed seeds that dropped into the composting soil or that passed through the animal's digestive tracts first. There is no way to prevent re-sprouting unless they roast the soil, which they only do for human sewage that is bagged as garden soil these days.

In your case I would have checked out the back pages of the local (Loudoun Times, Patch, etc) newspapers for some of the gardeners that advertise services there, and I am sure that one of them could be hired on a long term or a short term basis to come by for a few hours a week to clean up the flower beds and take care of the outside for you if you can't do it yourself.

Had you done this at the time you received the first letter, no matter what happened after that the gardener would be showing up each week and getting the work done no matter whether you ended up leaving the premises or staying--you would not have had to worry about this escalating and the matter would have been closed.

The other thing is, most HOAs do their property checks at certain times of the (month, year, season) and they advertise when and where they will be checking in the HOA news magazines or publications that go out to all landowners. If you know when they will be snooping around, you can set up times for the gardener to come by in advance of each of those dates and get the weeds pulled out and the beds raked, shrubs trimmed etc.

You also might wish to consult an attorney who has experience in dealing with HOA disputes. You seem to be trying to fight this against their attorneys yourself. A good attorney would probably cost you what the HOA is going to charge you anyway, and may be able to save you at least that much or more--what is there to lose?

The other consideration is that if the first complaint arrived about your garden during a time when the HOA was NOT conducting their (annual, monthly, etc) property inspections, then you may be the victim of a neighbor doing the complaining about your garden. The community where I lived ONLY did one inspection a year, in the spring. If you got fined any time the rest of the year, it was because of neighbors complaining about you to the HOA covenants bord, then the board would send you a notice to fix the problem, then to appear before the board (after fixing the problem) and letting them know it is fixed to avoid the fine; or if you failed in doing that, they would press the fine, legalities, etc. If your neighbors are the ones complaining, this brings us to the next question:

You might want to consider, what are the reasons you are staying as a landowner in that HOA zone? This much trouble now can only point to a whole lot more trouble percolating down the road, for a dispute puts you fully locked and loaded in their crosshairs forever after, and these people sound as if they are not above holding a grudge in their self righteousness adherance to putting "the letter of the law" above the "spirit of the law." There are many other options in the area where HOA's are not so anally retentive.

Good luck on whatever you decide to do!

Try violence. They always respond to violence.

I am a HOA President in Loudoun. It seems very steep to fine $500 for weeds but you shouldn't have ignored the notice, albeit I understand and sympathize with your personal grief. Bottom line here is no judge will uphold a $1,800 HOA violation for weeds. The judge will most likely side with you as your HOA comes off like jerks. Take it to court, you'll win.

Move you stupid ass. Or rent the place to niggers.

Is this real?

If so, you sound like a snowflake. And that you may be missing a man in the house. A snowflake with no man around is a recipe for disaster.

In the time it took you to write that painful diatribe, you could have googled "weed killer", then gotten in your BMW and gone to Home Depot, bought a fucking can of Roundup, sprayed the weeds...and judging by the length of your post - they would have actually died before you finished typing it.

^^^ Hilarious! Best post of 2016 goes to HOA President!

Why didn't you buy a property that didn't have an HOA? No HOA, no problem.

I live in the same neighborhood, outside the gates, and I have to agree that they have their priorities mixed up.

There are a couple of douchebags that walk around with their dogs and let them piss and shit in my yard. I know who they are and have told the HOA. They said there's nothing they can do and told me to call the sheriff's office instead of sending them a notice of the rules. Aside from that, I have to listen to barking dogs all day long. I don't even have a dog!

Leave them some xylitol treats. Problem solved.

Wah wah, too bad your mom has passed or I would suggest you suckle her teet, ya grown-ass baby. You blatantly ignore the rules and make your neighbors look at your shitty yard for a year. How do you think THEY FEEL??? Sounds like you are too poor to afford where you live. You live in Belmont, why can you not afford to hire someone to do these plebeian chores? Best to stop pretending and more to Georgetown South in Manassas where you can let your yard go to shit and not get in trouble. Actually it will be in fashion. Maybe now you will understand the plight of the black man. How it is atrocious to follow rules and not always get your way no matter what you do.

Hello -- If you do some research on thistle weeds you will find out that literally nothing kills those things. As I recall, Mike McGrath once made a comment on WTOP about thistle weeds. He said the only thing that will kill them is throwing an old carpet over the patch and letting it sit there all summer. Obviously, you can't do that because of the HOA. Could you get away with using old carpet over the garden bed, and covering it thoroughly with mulch to hide the ugliness? If there are foundation plantings you could cut out holes for them. Just a thought. I will tell you that I've been fighting thistle weeds in the flower beds on my Western Loudoun property for three years and so far the weeds are still around. (I inherited the thistle problem from the previous homeowners who evidently didn't even try to fight them). I've tried smothering them with cardboard and mulch, and they grow right through the cardboard. I've tried killing them with a dragon weeder (a flame thrower), and they come back. Usually I'll be picking the prickly things once or twice a week with leather gloves. That keeps the aesthetics, and eventually the roots will run out of energy and die off, but so far it's been three years and they haven't died yet. I don't have an HOA so the only person I'm trying to please is myself. The thistles grow wild along the roadsides all over Loudoun County and that is how the seeds get spread. I'm sorry about your loss and your father's illness. I wish you the best of luck in dealing with the HOA nazis, and hope you find some actual humans who can understand your plight and will cut you the same slack they surely would want someone to cut them if they were in your shoes. If you decide to try to get rid of the thistles yourself, as opposed to hiring people to do that for you, you will find gardening to be very therapeutic. You will thoroughly enjoy the time you spend outside, with the birds singing all around you and the sun gentle on your back (early in the morning/later in the evening). You will find yourself chatting with the neighbors out for a stroll, and maybe get to know them if you don't already. I don't like using strong herbicides. They're bad for you and they're bad for the environment. They have been linked to breast cancer, for example. But if you have just one or two flower beds, it shouldn't take you too much time to hand pull the thistles on a weekly basis. Or you could hire either a professional gardener or a local teenager to help keep the garden in order.