Back to the 7th Street hedges

Sunday, February 9^th, 2014

This is the last of my litter cleaning posts I should have to do completely from memory.  I got smart this week and started taking notes in my statement book.

I was determined to get back to those juniper hedges full of trash along 7^th Street, south of Bridge.  But first there was Schroeder Park Dog Park, and the Intersection of the Redwoods, avenue and highway. 

There were relatively few butts in the triangle or in the street, due to getting the gravel off the edge, I think.  I’m also slowly picking up the ankle-twisting rocks and out-of-place sticks.

I worked down the south side of the intersection all the way to the end of the guardrail.  Neglecting that section the previous week seemed to have attracted a lot more litter.  Even in the places I pick up every week, I am still picking up old butts; it’s impossible to get all the litter out of any area the first few times.  But every week, I go a little farther away from the road along that side.

When I got down to intersections of Bridge, 6^th and 7^th, I decided to work the south side of Bridge between the intersections first, as it had quickly acquired visible trash in the week between.  Halfway down the block, I crossed Bridge to the small trash beckoning from the north side.  I soon found that someone had broken a bottle over a wide area along the side of the east building, too widespread to bother with a broom and dustpan; it was pick it up one piece at a time.  I worked up 6^th Street a few parking spots, and then down the block to 7^th and around that corner, picking up mainly the stuff visible from the street.  Crossed at the light, finished the south side of Bridge, and worked up 7^th Street toward the river, down to the end of the block, just to clean what I had covered the week before.

I also crossed the intersection at 7^th, picked up the island, and then noticed the butts piled at the base of the traffic divider posts on M street.  Smokers do love a target to aim their butts at.  There are also piles of soil and grass among the posts, possible piled by the street sweeper, that I may have to clean up one of these days.

I moved my truck from 6^th near Bridge to the restaurant across from Voorhies on the east side of 7^th.  Started picking up in the shrubbery on the edge of their lot and worked a little ways toward the bridge, turned around, and started down 7^th toward the hedges.  The backdoor of the restaurant had litter that caused me to circle around the place before proceeding again.  The next property was fairly clean.  And then came the juniper hedges. 

I collected 4 or 5 grocery sacks full of trash of that stretch, much of it way in the back by the fence.  The ends of clear sections tend to gather windblown trash, where it blows down the fence and lodges in the shrubs.  And passersby tend to throw their stuff at the back of the hedge as well, where it’s hard to reach even with a litter grabber.  Tree litter and leaves are piled up against the front, covering part of the sidewalk.

Junipers truly should not be hedged, and hedging should be avoided as much as possible.  They are an ugly security hazard.  Portland has a nuisance ordinance forbidding trash-collecting hedges.  Hedges are ugly, and ugly attracts ugly, as people throw their ugly stuff in ugly places.  

Hedges hide burglars, assailants, and vagrant sleepers.  Hedged junipers in particular are a fire hazard, which was illustrated in front of Bi-Mart last year; now they have cinders in that spot.  When a shrub outgrows its space, the thing to do is cut it to the ground and let it grow back; limb it up; or replace it.  Young shrubs are a lot prettier than old, hedged shrubs, and collect a lot less trash.