Gutter Cleaning. (Hold Your Nose for this Post)

I've mentioned the street in front of our house.
It was new 1 1/2 years ago.
There is a lovely, wide sidewalk, wide enough for cars to drive on... which they do from time to time.  Next to that, between the lovely sidewalk and our house is a large gutter for water to course down when the rains come.  It is about 3 feet deep and 2 1/2 feet across, uncovered except for the entrance to our driveway.

 We don't have much rain here so 9-10 months of the year this trench gets filled up with sand, plastic bags and garbage of all kinds - a very handy garbage dump.  Worse than this, it has repeatedly served as the dumping ground for the emptying of a liquid sewage trunk that empties out cesspools. Absolutely gross, I know.  It reeks, too.

 So since the time we moved into our house, 3 years ago, we have watched it fill up.  Last week, it was within inches of the top.  Really nasty.

Last week, we had a pleasant surprise, as city workers, starting at the other end of the road, began to painstakingly dig out the sand and everything else that had accumulated in this trench.   Would they come all the way to our house, a mile away?

Yesterday was the day.

The "goop" was all piled onto the sidewalk to dry out and is to be hauled off in the next week...we hope. 

The job was accomplished in a matter of hours and they moved on down the road. 

 There were even treasures found--spoons that had somehow gotten tossed with the garbage. My neighbors tried to re-claim those but the diggers insisted that "finders, keepers; losers, weepers".   And the number of old tires was amazing.

  I know this hasn't been a very pleasant blog post--just the stark reality of living on Mulberry Street.

p.s.  Wish the blog had "smell" capacity so you could get the real flavor of life on M. Street.