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.