Going to take more than a leafblower

It ain't easy being green after a hurricane. Consider yard waste. There is SO much of it my compost is overflowing and I can't do any more. It breaks my heart, all that leafy matter going into giant dumpsters. If it were only a couple of months later, we could make wreaths and garland from the pine branches and deck the halls.

There are so many trees to say goodbye to. My friend with a tree in her guest room had this to say:

Did you know about the scruffy, no-account Chinese tallow tree that gave his life to save my house? He caught the main trunk of the Old Man (75 rings) and held him in his branches until the crane could get him off. He was badly split and leaning - so he was chopped down too [I was not there to see the killing]. Very sad for both my tree-men. I miss them both. And seeing their broken bodies in my yard everyday is hard. I loved the smell of pine after a rain. And the squirrels nested in the Old Man and ate pine cones like corn on the cob. Recovery will be slow.

Today, only ten days after the storm, which is amazing to me, contractors entered my neighborhood and began loading debris. It's not the usual city crew, and the equipment is ill prepared for the job. There are two guys running around with little bitty front end loaders filling dumpsters. Since their equipment is lacking, they can only pick up the branches, none of the leaves and shredded pine twigs, and no big logs from whole trees. If it is on the lawn, they don't pick it up because they destroy the turf with it. My kind neighbor Margaret who let us all dump branches on her sidewalk will regret her generosity when she sees that her edging was scooped up too. To his credit, the forklift operator was very upset when he did it.
I discovered that if I raked everything into the street, the baby forklifts could scoop up everything easier, so I did my best for the neighborhood by raking their debris into the street until the dumpster was full. Then then little scoopers moved down the street to be closer to the next dumpster. They were on a clear mission: get the most bang for the effort and move on. Houston might have been destroyed in a day, but it's going to take a lot longer to clean it up.
It's hard to think about recycling this week. I posted the little recycle Tuesday sign on my lawn, since our neighborhood is being threatened with losing curbside pickup if we don't increase our participation, but the green bins are woefully not in evidence this week. One would think there are a million plastic water bottles waiting to be recycled, no?
But it ain't easy being green when you don't have power. 25% of Center Point's customers are still without the juice, including two of my friends one neighborhood removed. And traffic lights? What are those? The city is a snarl. About 25% of the lights are working. Monday's back to work traffic was the worst in the history of the city. With local lights out, commuters are taking to the freeways, which are NOT designed for the load. Contra flow lanes were still closed for safety because there were no signals. By day's end, police were converted to crossing guards at major intersections.

And then, there's school. The city's major school district opened about a third of its schools this week. They are opening them as they can, which is mass confusion for families with children in more than one school. OIYY!!! And this isn't even Galveston.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bill has gone to Washington to ask the Federal Government to give us a fair shake and hurry up about it. With the bailout of the financial markets breaking the back of the economy, they are stuck in Park. Get it in gear, Congress. What we are asking is a pittance compared to the bailout, and we didn't cause this fiasco like the well paid executives on Wall Street did. Remember, Houston is the city that told New Orleans we would take 250,000 people, including everyone in the Superdome, and keep them, apparently forever, since all the money thrown at New Orleans has not caused those citizens to find The Road Home. It's our turn.

That's life today in the Bayou City. Gotta go. My little friend operating the baby forklift is back. He needs me to rake! This is what retirees do!