Still Starting Redwood Avenue

Monday, February 24, 2014

Monday morning, Petey and I took our morning walk at the proper time, before dawn.  I noticed the flame from the Wastewater Treatment plant, and reflected that, when I don’t see it, the air is stinky between it and the river.  It’s burning odorless methane with a lot of stinkier gasses, so that fits.  I called and left a message for our Assistant City Manager to ask about how that works.  He called later and said that they have a pilot light that lights gases coming from the stack, but sometimes there aren’t enough gases to light the flame, but there may be enough to smell.  He didn’t say, but maybe the pilot blows out sometimes.

I was feeling good, so it was a work day.  Schroeder Park, its memorial pavers and its dog-dug holes waited.  So did Redwood Avenue.  I decided to skip Toastmasters and go to Schroeder instead.  I was supposed to give a speech, but those pavers needed to get off the grass.

Pavers are set in place, but still need more 4 x 8 sand around them to keep them in place.

There were two regulars there with their respective dogs when I arrived.  They left while I was moving the pavers back into their bed.  When that was done, I picked up the litter around the parking area, maybe 4 little pieces. 

I got out the wheelbarrow, a shovel, a rake, and my litter grabber and bucket.  Hung the bucket on a wheelbarrow handle and laid the grabber across both, also a good place for my adjustable rake once I was in the gate.  Raked up gravel from what was spread inside the entrance; shoveled a load in the barrow; pushed it out to the other side of the field where most of the holes were and filled them, raking dirt over the gravel where I could.

I did that 4 or 5 times, while several people came, played, and left with their dogs.  Everyone took a “Time to Crown Your Roses” leaflet.  One lady had a gardening question about alternatives to grass lawn with dogs.  I recommended creeping jenny (lysimachia) or blue star creeper. 

By the time I was done and got back to Redwood, it was 1:00.  I parked in the triangle at the Intersection of the Redwoods and cleaned up that and the south side of the road first.  I crossed to the ditch next to the Fairgrounds parking lot and found some litter that I’d missed the week before, and new butts on the roadside.

I already had a half-full bag of litter from raking pine needles for my parents on Saturday from Pinecrest (the place to go for clean pine needles from its wide gravel shoulders, where the wind blows the leaves away and pine needles stay, but there is a lot of litter in the ditches from people driving to the dump).  I left the bag in my truck and used my small bucket to start filling it the rest of the way.

From the truck, I crossed the other side of the intersection to the swale between the Redwoods, wide, shallow and seemingly fairly clean.  But the mass of cigarette butts just on the other side gave the lie to that; the going was very slow there.  I worked the upper edge near the highway, then went after the big litter toward the bottom, quickly filled the bucket, and crossed back to dump it in the bag.

I crossed to the other side of the YMCA’s driveway and was appalled at how many old butts I’d left the previous Sunday.  But then, that was where I had called it quits for the day, and didn’t get back to it Monday, continuing west along the ditch instead.  I started picking that area up in earnest, getting nearly to the gravel and its puzzle pieces before Crystal called for a ride home from work.

When I got back, I parked near the Fairgrounds main fence, where a fair bit of big litter had beckoned for days.  Got out a new litter bag and couldn’t find my marker, which bugged the heck out of me.  Worked a bit along the west side of the lot where I was parked, but the trash there was thick and calling me away from the road.  I didn’t have a sign for the top of my truck yet, so I went back to the front fence, noting the trash pit in the foot of space between the west fence and the block wall supporting the parking lot.  Not for today; I was working the roadside. 

I got halfway down the fence to the gate, working back and forth between the road and the fence, when I happened to look past the fence and down, near the base of the wall it was on.  The space between the wall and the ugly-hedged shrubbery was heavy with trash, not so much as the west side, but heavy enough.  I started working back along the fence, pulling it out with my litter grabber and filling the bag. 

I remembered that my marker was in my tool belt the whole time and put my website on the bag when I found a hard plastic sign and used it for a writing surface.  I finished working back to the truck and worked my way down the roadside to the gate, cleaning trash from the fence to the road, and then worked back along the fence, pulling trash from the other side until I got back to the place I’d left off.

I was also cutting strings and zip ties off the fence from signs that had been hung and removed.  My World's Greatest Gardening Scissors went missing at one point and I had to work back towards the gate again to find where they'd fallen from my belt.

It was time to move the truck and start a new bag.  I moved the truck to in front of the grandstand area and picked up along that fence there a ways.  Crossed to the decorative concrete divider between the highways and cleaned it up fairly quickly, this being the second time. 

Then I started into the east end of the big swale, where I had left off that day.  There were many, many butts, some larger litter, and as always, plastic pieces from accidents. 

This swale is next to a highway intersection, where traffic builds up at the light.  Drivers who smoke while driving but don’t like to use their ashtrays tend to throw out their butts and light up another one while stopped at a light. 

That is better than those who use their ashtrays and then dump them in parking lots or other people’s driveways.  That takes premeditation and is distinctly anti-social.  Those who thrown one butt at a time can be unconscious; they literally do not know what they do.  The unconscious litterer can be reached by seeing someone in a bright advertising tunic picking up butts one at a time.  The ashtray dumper probably cannot be reached save by a major epiphany or prosecution.

But it takes two for litter to lie; the one who drops it, and the person who does not pick it up off his property, rented or owned.  Those who let it lie are usually not conscious of it.  The subconscious sees all, but filters it for the conscious, which prefers not to see ugliness, especially ugliness that might entail work to fix, or that one can do nothing about. 

It appears that seeing someone in a bright green vest, cleaning up litter and requesting donations, makes some people conscious of the litter they have not been seeing, and drives them to clean up their properties.  A lot of litter has disappeared from occupied properties on Redwood Avenue over the few weeks I have worked out there.  Of course, it’s lawn-mowing season again, and people tend to pick up trash first.  But I’m seeing it disappearing from ditches and outside fences, as well.

The sun was setting before I could finish the swale, though the larger litter was gone.  This time, I remembered to stop at Riverside Park to drop off the two bags I had filled.