Thursday is Garbage Day In My Back Lane

Sure enough, 6am I heard the garbage truck coming down the lane. I sure am getting service these days. I could set my calendar to the garbage trucks now. Even civic holidays don't disrupt my Thursday garbage day. And this week the dumpsters were not even overflowing. There were a few dumpsters that were actually full, but not all of them. I think this week we only had regular residential garbage in our dumpsters. How weird is that!!!

There were a few issues in the back lane though. First, there is a dresser, two chairs and a foam mattress beside one of the dumpsters. The dresser has been there since Sept 4, and the foam mattress and chairs have been there since at least the 11th of Sept. I guess I was just wondering if they would be removed without me making a ticket. I am getting the feeling that I am the only one on my block that is reporting these items to 311. I was thinking that the paid employee of the City of Winnipeg that drives down the lanes verifying tickets might also drive down lanes looking for items for pickup. Maybe that was a little wishful thinking on my part. I will get on that today and report the items to 311 so the City worker can drive down my lane and verify that the items do need to be picked up. I think I should take a walk down the other lanes in my area as well, then, and see what other items have collected since the last time I did a back lane check. What would these people do without me? Maybe I should become a City Worker. Maybe 311 should put me on the payroll to walk or drive down back lanes and streets and report all the large items that are just sitting there, week after week. I could follow the garbage trucks and take note of the items they leave behind.

I could locate back yards where people leave their garbage in bags thinking the garbage trucks will pick it up. Here is a pile of garbage that is missing a dumpster. This garbage has been here since Sept 4. The people moved out of the house where these items are sitting. They did not bother to walk the garbage to one of the dumpsters in the back lane. The garbage trucks do not pick up anything that is not in a dumpster, and because this is just on the ground, it will stay there until I make a ticket to tell someone about it. I actually did make a ticket a few days ago. I requested that it be sent to City By-Laws for investigation. I also requested that this issue be looked at by those that decide where dumpsters go. There is a big gap in space between dumpster locations on either side of this particular residence. Maybe part of the fault in this garbage being dumped on the ground is that there is no dumpster close to this property. I wonder if one of the dumpsters at the end of the lane will get moved over behind that house. That would make sense to me. Why have a huge gap, then three dumpsters at the end of the lane.

If I was patrolling the back lanes of the North End I could also keep an eye on houses that choose to leave their garbage right below their upstairs windows. The upstairs tenant of the Party House is still tossing garbage out the window, and it just stays on the ground below. As the weeks go by, the garbage pile will grow, I am sure. It will grow until finally it is at the point where the City By-Laws officers will request the landlord to clean the property again.

The apples are still falling from the tree in the back yard of the Party House, and remaining on the ground. Nobody is cleaning them up. They are on the ground rotting and turning into muck. I could not imagine walking on that lawn. There are kids in the house and kids that play in the yard. The apples just squish under ones foot if they are stepped on. And the apples are still full of wasps. And the apples are feeding any animal around that needs to feed. I read the liveability act. This should not be an acceptable back yard. If I was employed to go down the back lanes and look for issues like this I could report them. But I am not. I am just a resident of one city block. I am just a resident who reached a tipping point. I am just one resident in the North End trying to take back my neighbourhood.

Fruit Share Winnipeg, What A Great Idea

If you have been reading my blog you are aware that I have wasps in my yard. I have a large amount of wasps in my yard. This is from the garbage in the back lanes and from an apple tree a few houses down from me. The apple tree is full of over ripe fruit, and it is falling on the ground and rotting. The apples in the tree are full of wasps and the apples on the ground are absolutely over run with wasps.
I did my civic duty and informed 311 about the issue. They, in turn, referred the issue to the City By-Law Office. But I still have rotting apples on my street, causing odor, wasps, and I am sure rodents.
My husband spoke with the property manager a few weeks ago, when he was shoveling out the suite for the residents. It seems it got too dirty, so the residents were temporarily removed, and house cleaning was performed. I digressed, sorry. The property manager said he did not care if we picked the apples. So, I went into the yard with a ladder and pail. I thought I would solve the problem and pick the remaining apples that were on the tree. I thought I could be a good neighbour and distribute the proceeds to everyone on the block. I began picking and was soon bitten by one of the wasps in the tree. My husband managed to pick half a pail of apples before we were driven out of the yard by the wasps.
In an earlier post I was suggesting that maybe the City By-Law Officers could collect the addresses of these problem trees and have them picked. The fruit could be donated to worthy causes, such as Winnipeg Harvest, soup kitchens, church groups who could bake with them, etc.
Then I was watching Breakfast TV this morning on Channel 5. There was a person on the show talking about a new group in town. They are Fruit Share Winnipeg. They have a blog at

http://fruitsharewinnipeg.blogspot.com/ and are currently working in a few areas of town only. But it is a start. If you have a tree that you would like to get picked, register it on their site. If you want to help picking, register on their site. What a great idea. Did I say that already? Who cares, I will say it again, what a great idea.

Now, what if that organization could get a list of problem trees? What if they could take care of these problem issues and turn them into a great day of picking apples?

What a great idea.

When Life Gives You Lemons You Make Lemonade

When life gives you lemons you make lemonade, or rather, when life gives you apples falling and rotting under the neighbours tree, you pick them and make apple crisp.

The property manager cleaned up the house and yard of the duplex a few doors down. When he was in the yard the question was asked, "Can we pick the apples off the tree?" The yard has a huge apple tree, filled with large apples. As of late the apples have been falling to the ground in the yard of the party duplex. The apples have been rotting and attracting wasps.

Although the apples were mostly cleaned up yesterday there are more on the ground today. I went into the yard to have a look at the tree and see if I could get an apple to try. I was wondering what the apples would be like, and if they would be ok to eat. There were so many apples on the ground that it was hard to walk without stepping on them. The apples on the ground were also covered with wasps. Some apples could hardly be seen for the amount of wasps on them. Other apples no longer held the shape of an apple and were just brown sauce on the ground.
I was not able to reach any of the apples on the tree myself. So, my husband got a stick and knocked one of the apples out of the tree. I took the apple home, washed it, and cut into it. We both tried the apple. It was good. It was a nice, sweet tasting apple. It wasn't grainy at all. It was actually a very good apple.
So, I decided I would go back into the yard with a ladder and a bucket, and pick the apples. That way they would not be dropping on the ground, rotting, and collecting all the wasps. The property manager said he did not care if we picked the apples. And the people living in the duplex do not seem to care anything about their yard. So, off we went. My husband brought the ladder, and I carried the bucket. I found a section of the tree that seemed to have a fair amount of apples. The ladder was set in place, and up I climbed to get some apples.

As soon as I was up the ladder I had a wasp on me. I thought I would be ok. They don't sting unless they are bothered and I thought I would just be careful not to bother the wasp sitting on my arm. I went to pick my first apple. I put my hand around it and noticed it had a hole in it and was full of wasps. That apple stayed in the tree. I went to the next apple. It looked fine, so I plucked it out of the tree and placed it in the bucket.
That was when I put my arm down. My arm touched my side, and the wasp stung. That was it for me. I was ready to leave with one single apple. The yard was full of wasps on the ground and they had overtaken the tree as well.
My husband was brave enough to go up the ladder and see what he could do. He was careful to check each apple before picking it, and slowly worked to get the apples out of the tree. He got half a bucket of apples from the tree. That was about it. The apples are high up in the tree, and full of wasps. The wasps were swarming all around the tree. And the apples on the ground were full of wasps as well.
We went home with the bucket half full of apples. It was harder than I thought because of the condition the yard was already in. I was hoping to make a bigger dent in the apples still on the tree.

But home I went. I washed the apples and cut half of them up, and made apple crisp.
I told my neighbour what I did as well. I said maybe next year we can pick the apples from the tree before they start falling on the ground. Maybe next year the entire neighbourhood can pick the apples from the tree and prevent the apples from falling to the ground and making the mess that we now have.
I wonder how many other trees there are in the city that have apples falling on the ground in the same fashion as this one. How many other yards are full of rotting, wasp infested apples?
What if the city had a list of these yards with apples people are not picking, or using? What if someone, or some group, picked the apples? They could be given to community members who wanted a bag of apples, or given to the food bank.  They could be given to a Church group to bake with and give to a soup kitchen. Something could be done with the apples so they are not left to rot on the ground.
Maybe we could turn a negative into a positive, with just a little imagination.

Bad Apples in the Alley

I opened the back gate to check on the dumpsters in my back lane tonight and all I saw on the ground was rotten apples. The lane was filled with rotten apples. I looked over toward the house where I knew the apples came from and three kids were standing in the lane. One of them was throwing apples.

I went back into the house and told my husband that the kids were out in the lane throwing the rotten apples down the lane. I said the lane was filled with rotten apples.

We both went out to the back lane and approached the kids. My husband told them to stop throwing the apples. I told the kids to pick up the apples and put them in the dumpster. I said they should have more respect for where they live. I told them that it was not right to be throwing the apples in the lane.

Well, the mom of one of the kids came out of the party duplex. She was screaming mad. She started yelling and swearing at us, asking if we were swearing at her kids. She was swearing at us telling us we better not be swearing at her kids. I said that I told the kids to pick up the apples they threw in the back lane and put them in the dumpsters. Her response was that the kids could do what they want. She said "this is the North End, what do you expect". My husband said he "expects neighbours to treat the neighbourhood with respect". She said "it is not her area anyway".  She yelled for a bit longer before we went our seperate ways.

After that bizarre introduction to my back lane tonight I proceeded to take pictures of the overflowing dumpsters. Here it is, my favorite dumpster of the week. The diaper box is still balancing mysteriously on top. No garbage fairies visited last night. Here's hoping they will come tonight.

Later in the day the kids started attacking one of the houses in the neighbourhood. The house is under construction and currently empty. The kids were banging the side of the house with a metal pole and destroying some of the wiring on the outside of the house. Luckily none of the windows were broken. That is mostly because the lower windows are all boarded up currently. As I was checking the house to see what damage they did, I looked over to the party duplex and saw garbage being thrown out of the upstairs window. I guess that is their garbage disposal system. And that would explain why the back yard looks like a dump site.
Thats it for now.

Rotten Apples in the neighbourhood

While doing my daily dumpster check I couldn't help but notice the apples in one of the yards. I guess there is an apple tree at the party duplex. Apples have been falling from the tree and are left on the ground to rot. This is causing odor in the back lane. It is also luring wasps to the area.

The people who own their homes on the block are great. They take care of their houses. They take care of their yards. They are respectful of others when it comes to noise control, parties, and being neighbours. Its the ones that are renting who do not seem to have the respect for their property and the property they rent from others. They have no thought for people around them.
So, this is another thing that must be dealt with by someone other than the habitants of this dwelling.