Litter cleaning is not aerobic

January 28th, 2014

I've been getting out of shape.  I figured out a while back that serious litter cleaning and dog walking do not mix well, and stopped walking the dog when I work.  It is not aerobic exercise.  Where the litter is thick, one does a lot of standing still but it wears out the hands and arms.  I've been becoming ambidextrous with my litter grabber, switching hands as they get tired.

I went shopping for new used clothing, and found that I am a size 10, larger than I like.  My dog has also been getting out of shape, getting injured from chasing balls, and I put my back out working on the Caveman Bridge.  I had to wear cabbage on it all day yesterday and last night.

So yesterday, I started walking him first thing in the morning, before daylight and before I write.  In the dark, it is easy to ignore the litter.  By the time it is light at that hour, I will be used to it.  I can pick up our route once a week when it's light, after I take an aerobic walk.  Dog walking works with litter cleanup when the route is fairly clean.

This morning, as I walked down Greenwood and along the river trail, I saw lit up buildings through the trees, apparently across the river.  They must be the fairgrounds buildings.

Cleaning the Caveman Bridge, Day 2

January 27th, 2014

I got a wild hair sooner than I expected.  Instead of continuing people litter pickup on Monday, I decided to really clean the bridge, starting with the dirtiest part, under the locust trees at the Southwest end.  The tree litter, dirt, and gravel attract litter like magnets; people naturally drop their ugly into ugliness.  I can’t clean up all such ugliness, but I can clean a bridge, and I can’t beat the location, apart from the way the arches and columns hide me.  I suppose the 7^th Street Bridge is next; it’s a lot simpler, cleaner, and wide open.

I realized, last night, that I have moved from protesting for a hobby to demonstrating for donations.  There is a difference, though the words were used interchangeably when I was a child.  I used to just complain about poor maintenance; I now demonstrate what needs to be done, using the advertising tunic to draw attention to it.

I parked in front of the disc golf course and got out my wheelbarrow and some tools: debris bucket; flat shovel; rake; hula hoe; broom; standing dustpan; and my litter grabber, hanging the litter bucket on the handle.  I also had to fold a bunch of leaflets to hand to passersby.  Advertising and work go hand in hand, and people appreciate my writing.  I hand out two-leaflet packets these days: a regular News You Can Use, Chickweed the subject this week, with an ad from Securing Our Safety  for their "Run For the Law" in March on the back; and Support Litter Cleanup in Grants Pass, so people can learn what I’m doing and why, with Grants Pass Property Nuisance Codes on the back.

I started cleaning from the SW stairs, first scraping the humus loose with the hula hoe, AKA scuffle hoe from its action, or stirrup hoe from its shape.  It’s a great tool for scraping ice from sidewalks as well.  I swept the loosened dirt into the dustpan from the first section and put it in the bucket, and repeated the work in the second section, up to where the arches start and the sidewalk goes around them. 

I stopped to take a photo of the chickweed growing in the accumulated humus in the corner, regretting that my camera phone was low on power and I had to use my talking phone, which doesn’t have a handy chip for transfer to my computer or internet capability.  But I later sent photos to my daughter, who used her i-phone to send them to my email.

I used the flat shovel to scoop out that corner.  That was the last time I used the shovel, and never used the rake.  I put them back in the truck when the bucket was full enough to dump.  The broom and dustpan were sufficient for cleaning up everything I loosened with the other tools, which might not be the case when the weather is wet.  Therefore, I won’t be cleaning the bridge when it is wet, so this might be a long-term project, looking at the weather this week.

At that point, I started using the hula hoe on the moss and humus above the pavement, where it had built up thick on the 2 lower portions of the parapet.  With the humus and dust blown into the moss at that level, it was not only thick, but dirty and ugly.  The hoe couldn’t get the dirt out of the corners, so I used my world’s greatest gardening scissors to detail it.

The cheapest broom at Walmart, a gray model with relatively few but stiff bristles, is amazingly effective on pavement, probably because the more widely space bristles get down into the pavement texture.  Between that and the standing dustpan, it was easy to scoop the dirt and moss into the big bucket, and sweep the dust along the bridge.

I had forgotten my blower, and at one point went home to get it and take a break.  On the way, I got that broken bottle I'd seen the day before, using that broom and dustpan. It's really good for broken glass.

By the time the sun was setting, I had managed to clean along the parapet to the center of the bridge along the west side.  Starting there, I got out my battery powered blower and started blowing the gravel from the edge of the sidewalk toward the parapet to sweep it up, as well as blowing the dust back toward the end, sweeping it up occasionally as it got too thick.  Between a new battery and an old one, I managed to almost blow off the area I had cleaned.  The day’s work took about 5 hours.

What did I carry the litter grabber and litter bucket for?  Picking up the fresh litter between my truck and the bridge, stopping my wheelbarrow to get it.  I like to keep a place clean once I clean it.

Cleaning the Caveman Bridge

January 26th, 2014

Sunday is my morning for weeding classes at Schroeder Dog Park, at 9:00 AM this time of year.  There are no weeds blooming in the actual dog park, but there were some Creeping Charlie blooming in the 2” wide crack between the curb and pavement in the parking circle.  I didn’t realize how wide that opening was until I took a scoop shovel and attempted to clean up the accumulated humus and plants. 

But before I pulled out the shovel, I picked up litter in both pens.  There was very little trash beyond a very few butts, but there were a good half-dozen piles of dog waste and some holes dug.  It was nice that I had some dog waste bags from Greenwood Dog Park.  It helped that the piles were frozen as well.  I pulled out the wheelbarrow and flat shovel, scooped up some gravel from the front of the pen, and filled the holes.

On the way home, I stopped for a little while at the Redwood Avenue/Hwy intersection and picked up small amount of litter that had gathered in the inner triangle since the previous Sunday.  I also worked the other side of Redwood leading up to the light.  I had thought about continuing down the Avenue, but the amount and size of the trash I have seen along there scares me a bit.  I have to talk to the City about making a dumpster available for large bags of trash, so I can do that area.  One piece of car I picked up next to the intersection was 2 ½ feet long and 8 inches wide, which barely fit in the Courier parking lot trash can later on.

Besides, I had a hankering to clean up the Caveman Bridge and to keep working around the bridges and the South Y until I figure it’s clean enough.  So I parked in Hellgate’s parking lot and started down that side of the street.  I filled a bag between the bridge and its closest intersection, working both sides of the road.

The bridge looked like it has not been cleaned in years (could be one year), with composted debris built up in corners and growing chickweed, and a line of tree litter and gravel along the railing, with its load of small litter, mostly butts, of course.  The tree litter gets wide and deep as one gets to the south end, under the locust trees.  At least I got the people litter.  One never gets it all, and people are constantly adding to it.  But at least it only adds up; it doesn’t multiply like weeds do. 

I may get a wild hair one of these days, get out my wheelbarrow and a few other tools, and clean up the rest of the debris.  Maybe after I’m pretty sure we won’t be spreading more gravel on icy streets.

I next parked in the locked driveway at the disc golf course, and spent the rest of the day picking up between the bridge and the Park Street intersection on both sides of the road, taking bags of litter down to the trash can on the stairs that go under the bridge into Riverside Park.  Under the bridge is the most littered place in the area, far worse than Tussing Park, as vagrants constantly mark their territory. 

My rule is to pick up litter in the area of a trash can any time I use it, but not too long at a time when the area is out of sight and extremely littered.  I spend about 5 minutes at a time in such a place.  But it is the only handy trash can near the bridge, and I will be visiting it fairly often.  I like to keep an area that I have worked in clean, once I clean it.  I at least got the area in the immediate area of the trash can clean, and the stairs from both sides of the road, with a some pickup between.

Near the end of the day, I parked near the West Park intersection, where someone had broken a beer bottle that needed sweeping, and the empty lot at the corner needed picking up.  From there, it was a bit far to the trash can under the bridge, so I took the rest of my trash to the Courier parking lot and the 6^th and G public lot, picking up most of both lots, though admittedly not covering every part.  But I will continue from West Park today, and finish those parking lots at the end of the day.

On my way back, I saw a broken bottle in the closed drive-in between 6th and 7th, where I had cleaned up the week before.  I'll pick that up tomorrow, too.

The prettiest pine needles I've ever seen

January 25th, 2014

I went to Greenwood Dog Park with Petey, my pit bull, and my blower with a new battery and a renewed old one.  

I had finally broken down and gone looking for a new blower or at least a battery at Home Depot.  A nice lady took us right to the blowers.  They were out of stock of my Black and Decker blower, which turned out well, because when I asked about batteries, I was taken to the battery row by the nice lady, who had previously gone to see if any blowers were in stock.  Finding the battery, I thought it would be nice to have a smart charger, and was pointed to one that was also fast, and would charge my batteries in an hour rather than a day.

So, when I got to the dog park, I was loaded with enough power to really blow the pavements around it. Ironically, I had visited mid-week to get some photos for my chickweed article, so the path was not as messy as usual.  But I blew off the bark from the front pavements, the sidewalk around the circle in front of the park, and the path down to the overlook.

The tunic gives me a new attitude toward doing more work for the public, and using all the tools at my disposal.  I'd complained about the compost that had been sloppily spread onto the edge of the path several months before, several times, but it hadn't been cleaned off.  My little battery blower, I said, didn't have the power to do the job.  The previous Saturday, I got my flat shovel out of the truck and scooped off the pavement.  This Saturday, I took my newly powered blower and blew off most of the remnant; rain will have to do the rest.

Likewise, when I was again stuck by thorns from low twigs on the locust trees, I grabbed my loppers (Fiskars 18" gear-action loppers are great for small women like me; a new one slices through anything it can get around) and limbed up the trees that the picnic table is under so I could safely walk around them.  I found one tiny piece of litter in the park, a scrap of tennis ball cover, so I picked up ankle-breaker rocks and put them in some holes the dogs have dug.  I'll probably  never get them all; they are constantly being eroded out of that very rocky soil.  

It is difficult indeed to put soil back into holes dogs have dug; they pack it down in in the process of digging.  Over at Schroeder, I use the loose gravel that they spread just inside the entrance to fill the holes; there is no such handy supply at Greenwood.  Some Saturday, I might make a try at scraping up the dirt and covering the rocks in the holes.

I greeted a few people walking by with their dogs or otherwise, and handed them the latest leaflets: the one above on chickweed, with an SOS ad on the back for their "Run for the Law" this March, and the Support Litter Cleanup in Grants Pass leaflet that explains what I'm doing, with landscape nuisance codes on the back.  Harry Mackin, walking his big, beautiful shepherd with his wife, asked me if I was going to run for Commissioner.  I said, "I don't want to boss anyone anymore!  I just want to make this (pointing to my tunic) work.  If this works, I don't want to do anything else for the next ten years."

 Pine trees on the north side of Brownell, with pretty needle mulch, before the wind blew hard.

As I left to head home, driving down Brownell, I saw pine needles on the sidewalk that I had been thinking about cleaning up and using elsewhere for months.  The big wind a few nights ago had gathered them in to piles.  It was now or never.  I put my tunic back on and raked them up, collecting a 30-gallon trash bag and a half of the finest, lightest, prettiest pine needles I had ever had the pleasure to rake.  I had enough power left in my blower to blow off the debris where I raked.  I later had the distinct pleasure of scattering those pretty needles into my parents' brick planter, providing proper and very pretty mulch for the spread of cyclamen and hellebores, neither of which sprout well with heavy leaf cover.

A better view of pretty pine needle mulch, naturally spread.

Highway Intersections and Parking Lots

(It took me a good month before I decided I needed to start a litter blog.  The first four posts are delayed recaps.)

I schedule my litter days mainly for the weekends or Sunday-Monday.  I worked the next weekend along Bridge Street, where I live, and downtown along 6^th Street.  I move a lot faster on Bridge Street, where there is naturally less litter than downtown.  (That was the weekend that I went to breakfast and worked around the restaurant; these recaps of the first month are not fully chronological.)  But I could still fill my bucket within a few blocks.

Last Saturday, I worked mainly on Greenwood, the Volunteer Park, and downtown a little.  Sunday, I was driving back from Schroeder weeding class, when was stopped in the line at the Redwood Avenue / Redwood Highway intersection, looking at the triangle between the three streets, full of butts and other trash, so I turned onto it and started cleaning it up, using a broom and dustpan on the butt-mulch along the edge, and then proceeding to the litter-grabber for the more widely scattered stuff.  Got some mashed cardboard boxes off the road as well. 

It was a great place to clean up, with people stopping at the light and watching me; some waved and I gave them leaflets telling about the service.  I spent a good hour and half there, and then had to go find places for 5 bags of litter and dirt. 

So I proceeded downtown, looking for public trash cans.  The one at the Courier lot was the first one I saw, and I dropped one there and picked up the front of their lot.  I dropped another at the first public parking lot on 7^th and picked it up.  Another couple went to the public parking lot at 7^th and G, where I picked up a bit in the front where it was really dirty.  The last went to the can behind the Visitors Center on G near 6^th.

Monday, I decided to work on litter Sunday-Mondays until the March, and do the Monday customer on Saturday after the Greenwood dog park weeding class.  I was still in a litter-cleaning mood and had a target picked out; the intersection on 7^th as one comes to the bridge, where drivers wait for the light and throw their butts.  The street sweeper gets the bulk of them where the curb makes it easy, and most butts up near the light were on the other side of the sidewalk with other litter.  But as one walks further up 7th street, the sidewalk becomes a path up the hill and the smokers aim their butts at the series of reflectors standing along the edge of the roadway.  Each had a huge accumulation around it, and they had to be picked up one by one.  Still, by the end of the afternoon, I had cleaned from the light up through the reflectors, as well as the lot at the closed drive-in restaurant where I parked, and partway onto the bridge.

Again, I had a batch of litter bags to drop in public trash cans, and parking lots to pick up while doing so.  I picked up some more from the Courier lot and finished picking up the lot at 7^th and G, among other spots, before the sun set.

It took about 6 weeks, but I have settled on where to clean first: Where it is dirtiest and has the most traffic.  For now, that is Redwood Avenue and the South Y.

Parks and City Streets

(It took me a good month before I decided I needed to start a litter blog.  The first four posts are delayed recaps.)

I teach 1-hour gardening classes in Greenwood and Schroeder dog parks and their vicinity, Saturdays at Greenwood and Sundays at Schroeder, weeding the parks when the weeds are flowering, the easiest time to kill them.  Join me at Schroeder, and earn your pass to all of Josephine County's parks for 8 hours of work.  At Greenwood you will learn about a greater variety of weeds. See details under "Gardening classes" at Garden Grants Pass.

There are few weeds to pull right now, so I mainly pick up litter, rocks, and fill holes inside the dog pens, and pick up litter in the area.  I must say, Jo Co Parks personnel have gotten much better about picking it up in Schroeder over the last year.  The same goes for Grants Pass Parks at the All-Sports Park.  Last week, when I walked down the pedestrian trail from the dog park and back up through the maintenance parking lot, I found very little litter until I got to the basketball court, where it was fresh.

I started out this venture in December with a tunic that was too wordy, too capitalized, and too block-letter for people to easily read it, and they didn’t.  3 weeks in, I was standing in front of a woman, talking to her at Schroeder Park, and she thought I worked for Jo Co Parks.  (I do, but not for pay; I serve on the advisory board and do volunteer work on the side.)  That’s when I became certain that I needed a new tunic ASAP, made a new one, and got it printed in 5 days.  Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of the old photos when I replaced the photo on my website, so you don’t get to see it now if you didn’t see it then.

But while I was still stuck with the old tunic, I reflected that it wouldn’t matter if people didn’t see me working in it if they wouldn’t read it, so I took a walk in Tussing Park, across the foot bridge from the Reinhart Volunteer Park (All-Sports Park).  I was impressed that the City had cut down a lot of brush and limbed up trees to where one can see campers, and I saw some blankets and trash from the bridge.  I was less impressed with the way the limbs and cut trees were left lying instead of being hauled out.  They will grow up into a tangled mass that will be uncleanable, while we will see the mess from the bridge, because the campers will move back in. 

I still hauled several grocery sacks of litter out of there, and reported some stuff too big for me to easily throw in the trash cans.  But the tables up in the improved area had much less litter around them than I’d ever seen before.  I still need to check out Baker Park, the other illegal camping park.  I haven’t been there since last summer.

City streets and alleys v. Parking Lots

(It took me a good month before I decided I needed to start a litter blog.  The first four posts are delayed recaps.)

Once the snow melted and I could garden again, litter cleaning had to be confined to days that I was not working for my customers, working 3 days per week for customers and two for the public. The days are flexible, allowing me to work on litter when a customer bows out for the day and work on that one's place on a "litter" day.

I worked around the downtown one day, mostly sticking to 6th Street, but getting lured into the landscaped alleys between G and H by litter that grew thicker the further one got from the street.  Hedged pyrocanthas along the walls make handy places for people to smoke out of the wind.  A back door area further out of sight and wind was full of larger litter, including discarded clothes hangers.  My compulsion drew me in, but the lack of people to see my tunic took me back to the street, eventually.

I decided to see how things went in Fred Meyer's parking lot, where there are a lot of shoppers.  But cars in parking lots block the view of the vest, so the location is not as visible as one might think.  Fred Meyer actually seems to work on keeping their lot clean as well.  But they stop at the landscaping behind Abbys' Pizza, a no-man's land full of butts and some party's confetti.  I previously did the downtown Safeway parking lot, not so big, where people can see me better.  I got into the habit of picking up litter at various stores while waiting on a household member who was shopping.

A friend asked me to breakfast at a downtown restaurant, and I was scheduled to pick up litter afterward, so I started in their back parking lot and worked up their alley to the street, around that part of the block and back to finish the parking lot.  One of the owners came out early on as I was working and said, "Bless you!  I pick up every day, but there's so much!"  She offered me a hot drink.

Contrast that with the reaction at Walmart a few days ago, where I was picking up a little, while waiting on a friend.  A manager who was sitting in her car saw me and asked me to stop working there.  They have people who come in every two weeks to clean the lot, she said.  I pointed out that is not sufficient; the litter in their lot drives me crazy, and has ever since they opened.  She said that they have so much volume that they can't keep up.  I pointed out that their great volume means that they can hire enough people to keep up. She said to call corporate headquarters, where an operator would type everything I had to say.   

I wrote to them in the evening, pointing out that Burger King and McDonalds pick up their lots several times a day.  I got a call the next morning from headquarters.  They confirmed the every-other-week cleanup, and said that, in addition, they pick up as needed.  I think I made it clear that this store does not pick up as needed; I have never seen anyone doing it.  They seemed to be cleaner, with fresher litter, yesterday.  But they should have a person picking up that lot every hour the store is opened, because that is what it would take to keep that lot clean, with the volume they sell and the size of that lot.

But that convinced me to stop doing store parking lots.  I don't want to embarrass any store but Walmart. There are plenty of more public places that need the work and have no one but the public responsible for them.

Starting out in the snow

(It took me a good month before I decided I needed to start a litter blog.  The first four posts are delayed recaps.)

I started this litter-cleaning business, making an advertising tunic and a website, just before the big snow storm and cold snap hit.  Just in time, since I can't do gardening when snow is on the ground, and can't do much but spread leaf mulch when it is frozen.

The day after the big snow, while it was still soft and the slush was piling up along the edge of the travel lane in front of my house, I realized that it would freeze solid that night and trap me in my driveway full of ice and snow.  So I cleared it from my driveway and the street in front of my house.

Once the snow cleared enough from the main roads enough to risk walking,  I put on the vest, took my litter grabber and some grocery sacks, and walked from my house on Bridge Street to my parents' house on Highland Avenue.  I filled two bags on the way, dropped them there, and did much the same on the way home.  Along the way there, I found a large, flattened cardboard box in the neighborhood east of G street a few blocks from the Gospel Rescue Mission recycling center, and brought it there.  It was quite a walk, and I saw that I didn't want to be so far from my truck, because sometimes I need other tools.  The best way to work is to drive to a likely location, and move the truck as necessary.

The second day, I walked around the downtown core with my dog, an area that gets a lot of traffic and litter. The presence of public trash cans made disposal easy.  The litter, mostly cigarette butts, was so thick in front of some bars and restaurants that I went home and got a broom and dustpan for those areas, moving the truck nearby whenever I found such a concentration.

I also decided that walking dogs while picking up litter works in the parks and neighborhood streets, where litter and people are widely scattered, but the dog just gets in the way downtown, where there are a lot of people and a lot of litter to pick up.   I picked up litter in the Xmas tree square, and decided to come back the next day with tools to clear the dirty ice and snow from the square and blow off the debris, leaving the dog at home.

Earlier that day, while passing Community Corrections, I noticed workers trying to clear ice from the sidewalk in front of their offices with a flat shovel, without much success.  I dropped in later to speak to someone in charge.  I learned that the crews were not going out to work because of the slipping hazard.  I showed her my hula hoe, and how it could move the ice more easily, scraping it on the pull as well as the push stroke, and they could use shovels to pick up the loosened ice.  A few days later, I heard from a friend that he'd seen a workers with a hula hoe and shovels clearing the ice later that day.

The next day, I came back to the square with a flat shovel, a scoop shovel, a hula hoe, broom, and two blowers, one of which turned out to have a dead battery.  I cleared it in one afternoon, as the sun and earth warmed the pavement through the ice.  One store owner asked me to clear the ice near the intersection in front of her shop, but it was in shade and frozen too hard to move.

I picked up a few dollars in tips over those days, but no donations from the website.  I didn't even have a pay button yet; Paypal had restricted my account and it took me a while to find a new money-transfer vendor.