Here is my submission for the #livesustainably "Pick It Up" sustainable living weekly competition!
Our property line goes along the road for about half a mile. So today, I got the four wheeler, a trash can, five gallon bucket, and gloves, and spent an hour cleaning up the roadside. I'd park the vehicle, walk up one side of the road and back down the other, picking up everything along the way and frequently foraging further into the woods. It felt good to get out of the flu-ridden house into fresh air while everybody else napped (now that Pixie has the flu, I'm the last bastion of healthiness!)
Our property is on the right. Most of the trash was on the "downhill side" property across the road
The fallen leaves and snow hid a lot of trash. How many bottles can you see? When I bent down to pick up the obvious ones, I saw more almost hidden--and ended up with 7 bottles from this general spot!
I was blown away by how many beer bottles and cans I picked up...they accounted for easily more than half the small litter. There is one unlabeled-squatty-brown-bottle drinker that has a habit of pitching them in the laurel across the road. Wish I would've thought to count them. Then there is a Bud Light drinker who prefers to toss his many cans onto our property. Hmmm. Just an example of how people don't follow existing laws...
Judging from the laurel growing up around and seemingly in this tire, it's been here awhile
I couldn't budge the tire, so I kept going.
This tire has bugged me since we moved here last year, but this competition spurred me to finally go get it. This is the bottom edge of our property, and that's the back of our barn up there.
This tire was full of water, which led to quite the comedy of errors as I attempted various ways of removing it before picking up the tire. I tried flipping it end over end, like crossfitters do. I tried rolling it down the road/hill in hopes that it would slosh out (and it went way further than I'd planned on, of course, so I then rolled it back up the hill...I just realized that's probably why I'm sore. It's those dang tires' fault.) I finally gave up and loaded it up with at least much less water in it.
The runoff creek that creates our property boundary on this side. Yeah, that tire was actually on our blueberry farming neighbor's side. One good deed for the day.
I never realized these rocks had fissures in them. There are more groups of rocks along this stretch of dropoff, all with intriguing cracks and holes.
Having picked up all the junk from one end to the other of our roadside property line--and all along the corresponding property across the road as well--I just couldn't let that first tire remain. Yes, the crazy lady went scrabbling through the laurel to retrieve a tire. Luckily nobody drove by while I fought to heave it upright, then managed to shove it out. It was full of dirt and still has the wheel (or hubcap or whatever) attached...well, no wonder it weighed so much. I barely managed to heave it onto the four wheeler, but I managed :)
The hole where the tire had been is on the top right.
My haul
In the end, I hauled off: four heaping 5-gallon bucketfuls of mostly bottles and cans; two tires, a huge black plastic sheet or tarp, a smashed metal bucket, a vehicle signal light, and a large flat piece of metal.
Benefits are a cleaner roadside, fresh air and much needed exercise, and having "helped out" three neighbors by getting trash off their property edges too. Feels good!
(Crossing my fingers that this posts. Earlier today I got the dreaded BANDWIDTH LIMIT EXCEEDED message and have had to severely limit my comments, which makes me sad. So I stayed off this afternoon and am hoping this will work!)