My entire neighborhood put flags on their lawn last Memorial Day. I put 12 there myself. Were we in compliance with the CDD? Didn't check. Don't really care.
I guess I'm fortunate to live in a neighborhood where people like to get together on projects like that. My neighbors seem more worried about enjoying their retirement and being liked by their neighbors, than worrying about what little doo-dad their neighbor has in their garden, just so they can report them to lawn ornament police.
When governments, especially small governments, make rules, they're always draconian. That's because fellow citizens don't want to sit in judgement as the designated hair splitter, and the lawyers don't want any ambiguity if they have to go to court.
The lawn ornament thing is there to prevent people from erecting giant monstrosities on their lawn that hurt property values. It wasn't written to prevent your tender eyes from observing a small religious artifact that you happen to find offensive. But you're certainly within your rights and the letter of the law to report the offender and have offensive the object removed. And a chorus of like-minded souls on this forum are sure to whip our their deed restrictions and remind us that we all agreed to be ruled by the most petty among us, and rules are rules.
I'd just ask how your happy retirement is going -- the one where you paid a bundle to live close to other happy retired people -- if you find your neighbors so offensive that you'd turn them in for something as trivial as an 8" cross in their garden.
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