Preoccupied with clean cement?

When waxing philosophically about the differences between south Florida where I live now and central Florida where I grew up, the priorities on the front of the house strike me immediately. Some things are the same everywhere, like attractive landscaping, maintaining the actual house (paint, etc.), and individual decorative touches like house flags, special mailboxes, or seasonal wreaths.

In my neighborhood, the homeowner's association pays a part-time maintenance guy who uses a lot of his non-emergency time cleaning the sidewalks. Really. There is this big machine that looks like a commercial floor cleaner that hooks up to a water source and scrubs concrete clean. Since most of the sidewalks are under oak trees, they do get dirty and stained, but where I grew up this wasn't an issue. Sidewalks got darker, so what? In my last trips to Deland and Leesburg, driveways and sidewalks were naturally darkened everywhere I looked.

But in my community, and others around here I've heard, concrete must be painted (only terracotta here) or cleaned. So here I am out pressure cleaning my driveway. This is a big deal for me since I have to plan around the absence of cars, if you know what I mean. Until I lived here I never paid too much attention to little stains, but when you clean up the dirt the rust spots and mystery stains stand out. IMO, it's just one more thing to obsess about. I think I'll go make a cake instead.