Grubby bastards

After much procrastinating, I finally mowed (most) of our back verge this morning. I am obviously the bad householder in our street once again - every other verge is neat and trim and well maintained, and ours looks like the residents are Hells Angels. The only things holding me back have been a power constraint (an extension cord that is a bit short for my electric mower) and a removal constraint (the green bins are only emptied every fortnight).

The extension cord was still a bit short this morning, so 30% of the verge remains an urban jungle. However, the rest is starting to look like normal suburbia. My biggest problem with mowing has been getting rid of the clippings. The wheelie bins might be big, but a small garden like ours still generates a lot of clippings - particularly when the last tenants obviously did no gardening for the entire 3 years of their residence. Every 2nd weekend has been spent cleaning up their leftovers, and I simply rake and mow and chop until the bin is full, then I have to wait for the bin to be emptied before starting again. That means I might get halfway through a garden bed and then have to stop, leaving the place looking like a half turned over tip.

I was puzzled as to why the lawn was not growing, until I worked out that the last lazy bastard probably never mowed it until he left. I am guessing he either got in a cheap contractor, or borrowed a mower and did a DYI. Unfortunately, when you don't mow for 6 months, the grass gets tall and thin and gangly, and you end up with an enormous amount of clippings. Instead of using a catcher and hauling them away, he just dumped it on the lawn. Hence our lawn was really just a two inch thick carpet of mulch. When it got wet and started to rot, it was pretty nasty. I have been raking that up and ditching it so as to give the lawn a chance to grow again, but now I am left with umpteen square metres of mud with a few grass stalks poking up.

I can see why all the wogs around here just concrete the yards and be done with it.

Anyway, as I was mowing the verge, I found that people passing by had used it as a tip, so I also half filled the recycling bin with empty beer bottles, chocolate bar wrappers, minty wrappers and the like. Even the odd pizza box. My verge ain't that big. People can be such grubs. I can't figure out why it should be an offence to leave a shotgun loaded with salt by the office window and to shoot litterers in the buttocks as they walk by. Hell, the council should pay me to blast a few offenders every now and then.