Welcome!

Hi, Neighbor! Welcome to Whispering Rock Development! We're so glad you bought a home in our community! So glad to see you! We're sure you'll "fit right in"!

Now, you're probably wondering if Whispering Rock has any covenants. Of course! We want the place to stay as delightful as it was when you decided to move here. So there are a few little "odds and ends" we ought to address. When you purchased your home you agreed to abide by these---so let's see what they are!

LIST OF COVENANTS

1. Paint. No wacky paint colors on houses. We know, one man's "wacky" is another man's "traditional," right? But we all pretty know what it means. If you have any doubts, please feel free to ask at the next board meeting, open to all residents.

2. Pets. Please restrict the number of dogs to an overall average of one large dog, which would be either one large dog, one medium and one small dog, or no more than three small dogs. We don't restrict the number of cats, but more than three is in bad taste, don't you think?

3. Mailboxes. Please, no whimsical mailboxes. We've had people ask if they can have mailboxes in the form of windmills, footballs, Jeeps, teddy bears, golf bags, and barns, barns, barns. Let's just stay with the classic Joroleman mailbox in uniform white.

4. Trees. We may be named for a rock, but we love our trees! No cutting down trees unless you are replacing the tree with a larger, healthier tree.

5. In-home businesses. We certainly don't think we can stop anyone from making money out of their home! That would require 24-hour surveillance! But we do discourage any obvious commercial activity, including but not limited to: storefronts, doctor's offices, medical labs, meth factories, animal breeding, distilling, accounting offices, massage parlors or "massage" parlors, tanning salons, hair salons, restaurants, catering, espionage, organized criminal activity, daycares, babysitting, dog-sitting, blogging, or writing and copyediting. Any violations will be dealt with firmly.

6. Vehicles. Every home in our development comes with an attractive two-car garage. Which doesn't mean you have to park your car in them---goodness, where would you store everything? No, but it does mean that we ask you to have no more than two cars to avoid cluttering the curbs. Please never use your home to store other vehicles, especially those that do not function. No hoopty wagons. Anything up on blocks will be forcibly removed.

7. Fences. Unless you build a board-approved backyard swimming pool, in which case state law requires at least a four-foot fence around the perimeter of the pool, we insist on no fencing to interrupt the flow of our development. They say good fences make good neighbors, but we say, who needs good neighbors? (That's a little Whispering Rock joke.) And if you do have a board-approved backyard swimming pool, that fence ought to be tasteful, preferably natural wood or stone. It better not be chain link, buster.

8. Decoration. Decorating for holidays is fun! But so is elegance and style. For most holidays we recommend a fun banner; the December holidays may include monocolor lights in a tasteful arrangement. A United States flag is welcome---we love our veterans! Please restrict its use to Flag Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day. Flags of other nations are welcome any time.

9. Parties. No more than twenty people are permitted at any gathering and must end at ten p.m., eleven p.m. on weekends. No amplified or live music. Please inform the board in advance so we'll know what to think when we see people outside your house. Better yet, invite the board to your party! Maybe you can run a little past eleven, if you get an impromptu approval!

10. Controlling authority. Don't give us that old "no controlling legal authority" guff. The board means business, and we can make you miserable even if we can't have you arrested. We know, it may seem restrictive, oppressive, even Victorian, but we in Whispering Rock believe the good life means restraint and feng shui, and we pretty much all back progressive causes so we could not possibly be oppressive.