Neighbours

This week we are having a Council Collection and at the weekend everyone along the street was busy putting garden cuttings and unwanted goods on the street verges. The scavengers were out in force so we all started early to give them time to go through our stuff and take it away before either the council or the weather beat them to it. I chatted to several of the scavengers, including one man who wanted a particular part from my dead microwave oven. He didn't take the whole oven as I had expected but ripped the back off and raided its insides. Most of the good stuff went early - so much better to recycle like this than to have it taken away and used as landfill.

Mr Next-door from up the hill said that he felt an obligation to put stuff out to be recycled. I must say that I don't feel that strongly about it but spent some time making hard decisions about what I would realistically take with me when I move, and parting with some much-loved items.

The next-doors at the back - I don't know their names - have some olive trees in their driveway which they keep clipped on their side but allow them to grow uncontrollably over my roof and gutters. I have tried several times to speak to them about their responsibility to keep their leaves out of my gutters but they never answer their bell. So, last week I dropped a note into their letter box and asked them, in view of the fact that the council would remove the cuttings, to clip the trees on my side.

I didn't expect any response as I had assumed that they must be 'grey nomads' who went north over winter but this morning a huge truck with a mulcher on the back arrived in the back lane and, although I haven't looked yet, I think that the trees have been removed altogether. Yeah!! They are messy and definitely not suited to a narrow garden bed between a stone wall and a driveway so perhaps my note prompted them to get rid of them in order to plant something more suitable.

I, for one, am not sorry to see the last of them.