My Urban Garden 8-31-08: Litterbugs and Bagworms

To illustrate the problem I have with litterbugs I submit these photos showing all the trash I’ve found in my garden this month.

Every day there is at least one more item.  One more bottle.  One more container.

One more something that someone has tossed into a flower bed or stashed under a bush.

 

Arranged for the photos  it might seem less like debris, or proof of other people’s apathy.

Maybe the quality of a neighborhood can be determined not just by how much litter accumulates on yards and sidewalks but also by what items are disgarded.

This was the first month I’ve found t-shirts or blue vinyl gloves.

In the past I’ve found a couple empty syringes.  A couple hair extensions.

Don’t worry.  I always recycle as much of the stuff I can.

   

 

The biggest insect problem I have now is bagworms.  Last fall I noticed what looked like a coccoon on my willow bush.  I left it there, which was a big mistake.  My willow is now in critical condition and the tiny vampires have moved on to my miniture blue spruce.  I have picked off and squished nearly a dozen little pouches this week.  Next spring I’ll be spraying for sure.

Where, oh where has my garbage can gone? And why was it replaced with a full one?

I’ve lived on the north side of Dayton for awhile.  It’s not the greatest part of town, and I’ve dealt with a lot of stuff.  But I’ve never had someone steal my garbage can and replace it with another one full of junk.

That’s what happened Monday.  I wheeled out my garbage can to the alley for Monday morning pick up, and then when I returned at noon I found it had been replaced with another garbage can full of old electronics, electrical boxes, an inflatable Miller beer store display and pieces of drywall and paving stone.

At first I thought one of my neighbors cleaning out their basement or garage must have learned the trash department wasn’t going to haul their junk away, so they switched their can with mine.  So I walked down the alley looking at the cans because my garbage can has distinct marks on one side and I’d recognize it if I saw it.  But it wasn’t anywhere to be found.

The mystery isn’t so much where the stuff came from.  Later when I dug through the items I discovered an address written on the computer tower and an old credit card receipt slider.  The question is how did it get here.  It’s from what used to be a Shell station nearly twenty blocks away.

I can imagine someone dumping junk they wanted to get rid of in my container after the garbage truck had come by and emptied it.  But why replace the garbage can?  And how did they manage to move the full one twenty blocks?  And why did they choose mine with all the other empty cans around?

Also, why couldn’t they just have taken the stuff to the south end recycling center that accepts electronics and one of the several metal scrap yards around downtown?  If you’re going to lug a heavy trash can full of junk over a mile, why not go an extra mile and a half and get rid of the stuff properly and for free?

I’d be bothered by the crime if I wasn’t so baffled by the motive.

My Urban Garden 8-17-08: Black Beauty Oriental Lily

Sleep and work while I can

My last class of the term was Thursday.  Now I have two weeks to sleep, clean up around the house, and tend to my garden.  But most of all I want to get as much sleep as possible.  I’m so tired that if I could eat sleep, I would.

Working full time at the factory second shift and being a full time daytime student only allows me to catch three or two-hour naps at a time during the weekdays.  If I’m lucky I’ll get five or six hours rest combined, but some days these last few weeks I’ve been operating on just two hours of sleep, cheap caffeine and Pop-Tart sugar.  I’ve managed to get by, but when Saturday comes around my body crashes like a cheap PC.  Even when I’ve set my alarm with the intention of waking up on those Saturday mornings just long enough to buy fresh vegetables and bagels at the Second Street Market, my body won’t have any of it.  

I wonder how single parents manage.

This lack of time is why I’m still bummed about my ethics paper.  I got an A and the teacher told me I did a great job.  Yet I caught two typos she didn’t.   If I’d gotten an A- or B+ I would’ve understood.  It was good, but I knew where it could’ve been more concise.  I sound like a perfectionist that’s never satisfied, and that’s partially true; but mostly I hated how long it took me to write a five page paper.  I ran out of time.  I was up all night and literally working on it up until the last possible minute.  And I knew if only had only one more evening I could’ve edited away all the problems that bothered me.  I also wanted to do a good job because I loved that ethics class and how the professor taught it.  This was the first course I’ve taken that seemed like a college course, and I wanted to meet those college standards.

I have to make it through September.  That’s when the factory will close second shift for good.  But, heck, first shift will be shut down through the entire month of December.  Rumor is that first shift and the plant will be closing for good in February, about a year earlier than originally planned.

In a way a plant closing is like learning that a longterm relationship is ending for good.  There will never be a reconciliation.  If a layoff is a seperation then this is a divorce.

As for me, I’m ready for it.  Me and the factory?  We’ve grown apart.  I’ve accepted it.  When I say I’ll miss the money but I’m ready for a change, it’s like saying I’ll miss the sex but it’s time to move on. 

But other breakups are messy, and some coworkers are acting out their frustrations.  They loudly trash talk the factory in the breakroom.  They don’t show up for work.  The company doesn’t care, so why should they? 

Messy breakups sweep up bystanders like me into their drama, whether I want to or not.  So I lend a sympathetic ear.  I cover for the absentees.  I just have to make it through September.

My Urban Garden 8-6-08: Hibiscus

Little trash talkers

I was watering and weeding my front garden this afternoon when I heard this little kid walking by with a group say, “Man, this garden smells like shit!  It smells like booty!”

I didn’t look up from my weeding, and again he repeated, “Man, this garden smells like shit!  It smells like booty!”  The kid couldn’t have been more than eight years old. It’s depressing to hear children cuss like that.  But also irritating because I couldn’t understand why he felt the need to trash talk and try to get a reaction from me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw there was an adult with him, but he didn’t reprimand him for using profanity.  Instead he calmly started to explain “There’s a reason for that….” but by then they were out of earshot.  Maybe he told him it was the wet mulch or all the stalks of dill that had just been pulled and piled up nearby.

Yeah, I should be the mature one, but while I was pretending to ignore him I considered what would be a good comeback.  Something like, “Maybe it’s this craptastic neighborhood surrounding my garden that you’re smelling” or “Oh, so my garden smells like your momma?”

I also imagined changing the hose nozzle to the jet setting and tagging the little gremlin in the back of the head with a blast of cold water. 

It’s not like I’ve ever claimed to be a role model.