Yardwork

When we moved into a rental we didn't count on having a lot of work to do around the house, but when you have children you spend a lot of time playing outside, and it was obvious we would have to put some sweat into making it work for us. Here in Georgia they use pine needles as a ground cover, and the lot our house is on is covered in huge trees so there was about 12 inches of needles and pine gunk. First just sweeping the driveway took hours, and then I began to rake up everything else. I filled the trash can 3 times and filled about 15 huge garbage sacks. Our neighbors had told us that we could just leave it on the side of the road and they would pick it up. Well on trash day we had all the bags ready at the curb, and some sticks and branches in the top of the can. The trash man came, and threw the branches and bags of leaves back into the yard, started emptying the can then stopped which dumped trash and glass all over our yard and then drove on. I was so mad and moved our can over to the other side so that he could finish emptying it in his way out. To my dismay he stopped, looked at our can and drove on! I was so upset that I called the city. The receptionist explained that we couldn't put natural waste in our can and that they could only take natural clippings that weren't in bags. That was such a strange concept to me, I couldn't imagine just leaving piles sitting there. So we went and empty the bags and left it on the curb. The next morning I got another call from the garbage supervisor, who left a message and yelled at me that it was not his fault that they couldn't take waste and that I shouldn't have put it in my can. Ok whatever, I wasn't sure why he even called... The next Saturday I got Kevin to help me move even more gunk out of our yard. It was the hottest day of Spetember and we were exhausted by lunchtime, but it was amazing how much more work I got done with him helping. We only got about 25% of the yard done but at least we had a place to put up our swings. I think it would easier to work hard if it was actually our property but for right now we will just pretend it is.