Welcome Home!
My cherry tree is blooming and it’s beautiful. Covered in a cloud of white flowers, hosting hundreds of pollen-drunk bees, it sits like a giant white sign screaming: Spring is here.
Ferns and hostas are peeking up through their cover of last year’s maple leaves.
My lilac is forming green-purple flower buds high and low, and the jasmine is getting ready to perfume my back yard.
The tulips are blooming – even the ones an industrious squirrel has transplanted into the middle of my front lawn.
It’s an altogether beautiful season in my yard – except for one thing: a proliferation of yard trash.
And I’ve had it.
I know, I know, you probably didn’t do it, but someone is doing it, and it’s driving me up the wall.
Last weekend, I started on the annual spring cleanup.
When I say “cleanup,” I mean pulling weeds, sweeping, and removing gray winter crud that’s piled into corners and crevices.
And what do I find on my front lawn?
A stack of video game covers, crushed, cracked and spread all over.
Cigarette butts and plastic cups, old advertising fliers, dog poop and various pieces of plastic garbage soon followed suit as I raked out the flowerbeds and mowed the lawn.
Allow me to disclose this stunning truth: Your coffee cup will NOT magically biodegrade in my flowerbed. The same goes for your candy wrapper (I like Mars Bars, too), your popsicle sticks, cigarette butts, Red Bull cans or whatever evidence is left from your last shoplifting adventure.
What’s a homeowner to do? Install an infrared garbage-detecting alarm system that comes on with bells, whistles and sprinklers when someone drops a piece of trash on my lawn?
Perhaps I should stake out the area day and night, popping out of the ground cover shrieking, “Hey, young lady, you pick that up right now or. …”
The next time you “accidentally” drop that candy wrapper, think about the fact that someone else has to pick it up and throw it away.
Or perhaps even better: Think of me, wild-haired and red-eyed after five sleepless nights on garbage-watch duty, waving a broom and running after you down the street. Now that should be a deterrent even for hardened garbage spreaders.