Around the end of 1996 I moved into Highlands Ranch, Colorado, dubbed "Beautiful Highlands Ranch." It was once rolling prairie. The last 30 years have seen the area transformed into a booming suburban housing development which, though unincorporated, supports almost 30 schools, a large post office, great parks and recreation centers, and more.
The whole population of nearly 100,000 people who abide in the ranch are required to submit to a community covenant. Committees patrol the cul de sacs (culs de sac?) to tell residents when they need to paint their houses (approximately every three years) and approve the color schemes. Any changes in landscaping must be approved by the community association; permanent clothes lines and anything else the neighbors might consider unsightly are strictly forbidden. Before the end of next month notices will be sent to any who fail to put away their Christmas decorations for the year, not supposed to be up more than 30 days after a holiday.
It's been 10 weeks since I arrived in Eugene, Oregon. Even with winter coming on, the place seemed so much more alive. There are trees everywhere! But it was autumn, and the leaves were beginning to fall. What do people do with all the leaves? (Compost, maybe?)
To my surprise, the kind of people who in Colorado would have owned snow blowers here have leaf blowers. I don't know, maybe they are the same thing with a different name. (Can you tell I'm more the rake and shovel type?) At any rate, they just blow the leaves from their yards, driveways, and sidewalks and leave them the streets.
Some of the piles of leaves are enormous and have been here longer than I have. Several times I've had a hard time finding a place to park amid the leaf piles.
Such a thing would have been a serious and fine-worthy offense in Beautiful (though largely treeless) Highlands Ranch.
I was discussing the leaf piles with the recent California transplants who own the house where I'm living. They were mystified by this practice as well. Why don't people bag up the leaves? Isn't it the homeowners' responsibility? Isn't there some kind of yard waste pickup along with trash and recycling? Or is it really considered OK to simply leave them in the street?
"They will come," Chris assured me. He was born and raised here. "The city picks up all the leaves."
"When will they come?"
"They've already started. They'll get there when they get there."
Yesterday, a dump truck and bulldozer came down my street, and, working in tandem, picked up all the leaf piles.
(File this under "It's not wrong, it's just different.")
5 comments:
i am sure Eugene must have the same issue Seattle does. There will be a big storm before people have their leaves raked up, bringing down more leaves, and then the leaves will block the storm drains and we'll have urban flooding. it gets really bad. i can't stand leaf blowers myself, and i suspect some people use them to just blow the leaves off their property, which does not really help matters. but i guess if you use them to blow leaves in a pile you clean up that is ok. but i always hear them at 9am on a saturday morning and that's just too early! also, you really should get some good rain boots. landsend will be having end of season sales soon. (even though it obviously is NOT the end of the season.)
i am sure Eugene must have the same issue Seattle does. There will be a big storm before people have their leaves raked up, bringing down more leaves, and then the leaves will block the storm drains and we'll have urban flooding. it gets really bad. i can't stand leaf blowers myself, and i suspect some people use them to just blow the leaves off their property, which does not really help matters. but i guess if you use them to blow leaves in a pile you clean up that is ok. but i always hear them at 9am on a saturday morning and that's just too early! also, you really should get some good rain boots. landsend will be having end of season sales soon. (even though it obviously is NOT the end of the season.)
Well, the official rules say you are supposed to store the leaves on your own property, and cover them, not piling them up in the street until the week they are scheduled to come by. There is a system to all this. But I wonder how many people are aware of it. Also, if you do want to compost or just put them on your garden, you can request to have leaves the city picks up at someone else's house brought to yours!
Maybe I'll get myself some official Oregon Duck rain boots @ Freddy's. They come in bright green.
Sounds like a great system to get rid of all the plastic bags. We always pile up our leaves inside a round wire-fence container and dump them into trash cans throughout the winter. There are too many to compost, but we do keep some for gardening. Coloradans fill up millions of bags of leaves every fall, so our landfills are filled with plastic & compost that will never get out of the bag. Crazy!
Heather, the system does have some things to recommend it. And I think the way city leaders envision it is with the leaves corralled much as you do it, until close to pickup. They DO make a big deal about keeping the bike lanes (very common here) cleared of leaves... even if the roads have many leaf piles. It's a good attempt at an environmentally responsible system!
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