Friday, November 4, 2011

The Joy of Living in New England

November 4 2011,

Last week on Saturday and Sunday we had our first snow storm, a nor-easter. Right before the storm I did a little bit of fall clean-up that most New-Englanders are accustom to. Fall clean-up consists of fighting with the rake, blower and the 30 gallon leaf bags. The other option is to pay a landscaping company $350 - $500 every time they do a clean-up, or buying a $500 mulcher that will make the leaves and branches much smaller. It may be worth it, but it's another machine that we have to store in the garage.

Because we have a family sedan and not a guzzling SUV, which everybody in this town seem to have, we have to take more trips to the dump to drop off our bags of leaves. Our car can only take 6 bags each trip. One in the front seat, 3 in the back seat, and 2 in the trunk.

Sidebar: Our town does not have curb side trash or recycling pick-up. So if you don't want to pay a trash company to pick up your trash every week for approximately $50 per month - you have to haul your crap out to the dump. The dump is approximately 2.6 miles each way, and takes approximately 23 minutes to go there, dump the stuff, and back.

So far we have accumlated twenty-one 30 gallon bags in one week. Still, the leaves keep on falling, there seem to be no end to it. No one in the neighborhood is raking and bagging, I guess they will be hiring somebody to do it. The ultimate question is, how much is your time worth?

If you're not busy, come on over and you can help me rake and bag.

Happy Fall,
Quilt & Bitch

2 comments:

p00lriah. said...

maybe you should just chop the tree off. :P

btw, that $50/month trash fee sounds like it's worth it. saves a lot of hassle.

Quilt+Bitch said...

We've thought about chopping down trees, but the leaves are mostly from our neighbor's trees.

The amount of trash we generate is very minimal. Most things go in the compost during the no-snow months. And since there are only two of us, we don't generate that much recycling or trash. I don't think the trash pick up will take the leaves.