July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
His gutters are looking a little seedy (06/25/08)
Back in the Saddle
By By JACK RONALD-
"Quite a little nursery you've got there," my neighbor said the other day.
If you have ash or maple trees, chances are you've got one too.
It was the Friday before Father's Day, and my neighbor was referring to our gutters.
Right along the front of the house, in just a prominent enough spot to be seen easily from the street, a healthy crop of bright green seedlings had taken root in the muck collected at the bottom of a stretch of gutter.
Around back, there was an equally healthy crop in the gutter of the garage. And along the back of the house, there was a smattering of green beginning to show despite some much vaunted "gutter guards" that are supposed to prevent this sort of thing.
Obviously, there was some work ahead for the weekend.
But it was my Friday night to work on Saturday morning's paper, so I procrastinated. I procrastinated again on Saturday, though I worried how the house would look to folks who had come back to Portland for their high school reunion.
("Yeah, it was a great visit. But, man, you should have seen how seedy the Ronald house looked." I could imagine the conversations.)
That's how it came to pass that on Father's Day, the very day when I should have been curled up with a good book or a bad movie on TV, I was up to my elbows in gunk.
It's not what I would recommend for any holiday celebration.
The front gutters were the biggest challenge, and they were just out of reach for our extension ladder.
Fortunately, my neighbor had one he could lend me. Actually, the one he lent isn't his; it belongs to a mutual friend who has run out of space in his own garage and has to store the ladder elsewhere.
(That fact alone made me feel better about the condition of our own garage.)
Ladders, particularly extension ladders, are not the best friends of middle aged males. They're unwieldy. They offer endless opportunities for injury. And, as one buddy has noted, they seem to weigh more now than they did 20 years ago.
But with some careful manipulation and a bit of planning, before long, I was digging out young ash and maple seedlings and accumulated leaves that had proved so fertile. And, just as fast, I was filthy.
Connie worked on the lower gutters at the back of the house as I tackled the ones on the east side of the garage. With pretty good speed, we'd cleaned things up so the place looked more presentable, even scrubbing some accumulated grime off the outside of the gutters to spruce them up.
We were feeling pretty satisfied with ourselves, and I was happy to have one of the summer's most unpleasant chores behind us.
Then, a couple of days later, I remembered the west side of the garage. You can't really see it from our back yard.
Sure enough, when I checked, there was a whole other crop of green seedlings to be cleaned out.
I'm not sure when I'll get around to that chore, but at the rate I'm going I'd say the Fourth of July is a good guess.
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If you have ash or maple trees, chances are you've got one too.
It was the Friday before Father's Day, and my neighbor was referring to our gutters.
Right along the front of the house, in just a prominent enough spot to be seen easily from the street, a healthy crop of bright green seedlings had taken root in the muck collected at the bottom of a stretch of gutter.
Around back, there was an equally healthy crop in the gutter of the garage. And along the back of the house, there was a smattering of green beginning to show despite some much vaunted "gutter guards" that are supposed to prevent this sort of thing.
Obviously, there was some work ahead for the weekend.
But it was my Friday night to work on Saturday morning's paper, so I procrastinated. I procrastinated again on Saturday, though I worried how the house would look to folks who had come back to Portland for their high school reunion.
("Yeah, it was a great visit. But, man, you should have seen how seedy the Ronald house looked." I could imagine the conversations.)
That's how it came to pass that on Father's Day, the very day when I should have been curled up with a good book or a bad movie on TV, I was up to my elbows in gunk.
It's not what I would recommend for any holiday celebration.
The front gutters were the biggest challenge, and they were just out of reach for our extension ladder.
Fortunately, my neighbor had one he could lend me. Actually, the one he lent isn't his; it belongs to a mutual friend who has run out of space in his own garage and has to store the ladder elsewhere.
(That fact alone made me feel better about the condition of our own garage.)
Ladders, particularly extension ladders, are not the best friends of middle aged males. They're unwieldy. They offer endless opportunities for injury. And, as one buddy has noted, they seem to weigh more now than they did 20 years ago.
But with some careful manipulation and a bit of planning, before long, I was digging out young ash and maple seedlings and accumulated leaves that had proved so fertile. And, just as fast, I was filthy.
Connie worked on the lower gutters at the back of the house as I tackled the ones on the east side of the garage. With pretty good speed, we'd cleaned things up so the place looked more presentable, even scrubbing some accumulated grime off the outside of the gutters to spruce them up.
We were feeling pretty satisfied with ourselves, and I was happy to have one of the summer's most unpleasant chores behind us.
Then, a couple of days later, I remembered the west side of the garage. You can't really see it from our back yard.
Sure enough, when I checked, there was a whole other crop of green seedlings to be cleaned out.
I'm not sure when I'll get around to that chore, but at the rate I'm going I'd say the Fourth of July is a good guess.
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