Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Getting Trashed

Every time a cold front blows through, like one did last night, I get trashed. Well, not me personally. My garden gets trashed and I take it personally. You see, I am one street off of a major thoroughfare that runs through Plano and across that road is a high school where the kids can't seem to find the trashcans in their parking lot. So, when the winds blow from the north, all of the garbage that kids leave in the high school parking lot or drivers throw out their windows ends up in my yard. Allow me to show you some new plant varieties in the garden.


Here we see the ubiquitous Cuppus mcdonaldoides.


Near this yucca is a companion to Cuppus mcdonaldoides, Cuppus lidus.


Oh, look. The rare Penstemon couponus. This one is the dollar fifty off variety.


This is Yucca papernapkinum.


Hesperaloe papernapkinum.


Another Hesperaloe. This one is Hesperaloe plasticfolia.


Not far from Cuppus mcdonaldoides is Bagus mcdonaldoides.


I am quickly losing my creativity. Look, trash in the Hesperaloe!


Oh, more trash! Half of a foam cup snagged in my Agave. Let's face it, I have a bunch of garbage in my garden and it all blew in overnight. It kind of makes sense that so much of the garbage is fast food related. If people don't care enough about the garbage they put in their bodies, then why should they care about the garbage they toss into the environment?




Usually there is a plastic bag or two that blows in with the trash. At least it helps with the collection of the trash.


And the most ironic piece of trash award goes to this mow and blow advertisement. "We Know It's Not Easy Being Green..." That's for sure.

16 comments:

  1. Arrrgh. My pet peeve. My trash abundance comes from people who drive by and toss it out the windows. ALL fast food debris, as you note. Many aim directly for the creek. I had no idea there were so many rude adults not taught good citizenship as children. I pick up a large garbage bag full 2-3 times each month. Once, while picking up trash near the main road, a car came roaring by and threw their trash out at my feet!
    Trash aside, your garden is waking up very nicely.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. I don’t know where you are Sandy, but if you are in Texas you can report litterers that throw trash out of cars at http://www.dontmesswithtexas.org/programs/report-a-litterer.php. Texas Department of Transportation will send the litterer a Don’t Mess with Texas litter bag and a letter reminding them not to throw their trash on the roads. It probably does not make a difference to the litterer, but it makes me feel like I am helping in a small degree.

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  2. Pretty amazing amount of trash considering that stuff has to turn a corner to find you. If you had a lawn then much of that trash would blow right past.

    It's actually easier being green once you get in the habit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shirley, when the wind comes from the northwest, the trash is funneled right into my yard. You are right, when I had a lawn, the trash kept blowing through. Fortunately, winds are from the south for most of the year and the trash is more of a seasonal issue.

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  3. I have the very same problem: only in my case it's a five acre field to the west of my house--all the tumbleweeds that come up around the margins, as well as tons of plastic grocery bags and sundry fast food papers tangle on the west side of my property fence and shrubs--I have to clean up every few days this time of year. I can't wait till plastic grocery bags are banned everywhere--and when American's wake up to the fact that fast food isn't--it's bad for you to eat, it's bad for the underpaid workers and the rest of us who have to subsidize their greedy bosses, and a colossal load on land fills: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You touched a nerve!

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    1. Ah, Panayoti, I can’t imagine keeping the trash out of five acres. Sounds like yours is a seasonal problem too.

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  4. We just get a lot of dust and dirt at our house. That's what happens when they cut down all the trees next door. It reminds me of my friend who moved to Brooklyn. When her son came over to the house he looked through the window and he said " Oh Mum you have a plastic bag tree just like ours" Unfortunately the plastic bag had to stay there.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Rock rose, those bags are hard to get out of the tops of trees, aren’t they? I can look out the window and see one in a tree across the street. I wonder if Walmart stopped making blue bags because they were so easy to identify in trees and other places they did not belong.

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  5. =)
    I feel your pain but couldn't help chuckling at the clever descriptions of these new garden 'varieties.'
    Made my day.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the comment Debra. Glad you got a laugh. I try to keep a good attitude about the disrespect of others. There is not much else I can do.

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  6. Funny for us, but not for you. Bummer. Interesting that your opuntia is still okay. I was at a client's in Keller today and theirs was toast, I assumed from the freeze. Some of those plants present some painful challenges I'm sure when trying to extract the trash entangled within them! Is spring here???

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    1. Toni, my cactus had some hard times after the ice storm in December. I think this one will pull through. I will have a post on my Opuntia woes soon. I have some spiny cactus in pots and one of the reasons they are not in the ground yet is the expected difficulty of extracting leaves and trash.

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  7. I hear you, oh do I hear you. It's often windy here, and a trash dumpster - regular scavengers or college kids leaving it open - and it swirls into my patio. Even at the old house on the edge of the city, my sotols, cacti caught everything airborne! McDonaldsii annoyinga is so true (pardon my bad paraphrase).

    I think spring is there!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is no escape, David. We practically live in a dumpster these days.
      This is the time we normally have our last freeze, so I certainly hope spring is finally here. The ice and cold last week really set back the clock on spring growth.

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  8. Uggh! How annoying! Our yard is an occasional port of call for trash brought in by the wind as well. The most annoying was probably the the time someone didn't secure their packing peanuts. My chickens have an uncanny ability to locate stuff like that.

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    Replies
    1. Oh no, Ally. Packing peanuts can’t be good for chickens.

      Delete

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