We walk up and down our road countless times a day. Well, I say countless, that is an exaggeration because I could count the number of times we walk up and down the road each day…but six or eight times doesn’t sound as often as countless!
Since my arrival in June I’ve watched debris collect in the bushes and trees and along the pavement and walls. I’ve reached a point where I really do think I’m going to become one of those good citizens who picks up rubbish. I am already a rubbish taker-outer but I’ve never picked it up before along the road.
I am annoyed by the thoughtless littering; the red bull can in the holly, the squashed cigarette box in the rose bushes, the half eaten bag of chips in the hydrangeas, the beer bottle wedged in the squirrel hole, and the shattered windshield glass in the gutter. By description you would think we lived on an undesirable road but we don’t, it’s just that after three months the signs of people discarding at will along their way are beginning to irritate me. The roads get swept every week but the pavements? Are they left to good citizens like me?
Should I wear a reflector vest?
My daughter and I started the clean up campaign today, she didn’t know she was participating in my new project.
There has been a black cardigan hanging over a railing, underneath some densely growing bushes, beckoning to her for weeks. She has been threatening to bring it home and today she did!
She gingerly caught it up with the plastic handles of her carrier bag as we were passing and without missing a step continued walking nonchalantly alongside me…for about five paces. Then she noticed the earwig and began shaking the cardi muttering words like,
“Oooh…aargh…yuck…” When a spider thoughtlessly emerged she didn’t drop it and flee, no, she was determined not to be beaten by a few silly earwigs and spiders, she ran helter-skelter up the road home, rushed into the flat and out to the patio and flung it on the ground.
I encouraged her to pick it up and bring it to me in the kitchen where I was waiting by the sink. She did, then left me to exterminate with water.
There were whole families of earwigs and it was dotted with spider webs; the small, long legged, wild life must have thought they had happened upon a lovely warm portion of the hedgerow. I managed to entice all the cardi dwellers to rush down the plug hole thus ending their critter little lives. Malia came in to watch the last of the exodus,
“Look, they’re like a cross between a cockroach and a scorpion!” she said. Hardly, but I see her logic, we are homeschoolers after all and whatever helps her to learn works for me.
Earwigs.
The cardie is now de-wigged, washed, dried and waiting to be worn.
That’s the first piece of rubbish dealt with and recycled to boot! What’s next?
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
No comments so far!
2011-09-08 13:08:52
I so enjoy keeping up with you & Malia through your blog. It usually makes me laugh and that is a good thing! Miss you back here in the States!
Margaret
Leave a Comment