king of the road
Sep. 23rd, 2004 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kip_wThey're doing some street work outside. Not this minute, of course. It started a few weeks ago when the City guys in hard hats came by and sprayed some marks on the curb where other City employees had previously taken some chunks off the concrete curb out front. We live on the bulb of a cul-de-sac, and the solid trash pickup guys sometimes have trouble dealing with the curve. Anyway the next thing was when some 'yellows,' as Sarah calls them, came by in the middle of the day and punched the hell out of the cement gutter that runs in front of the curb. This was interesting to me, just as it was to Sarah, who seemed to think the yellows were going to come back another day and knock the house down. I told her they wouldn't do that, hoping that they wouldn't make a liar out of Sarah's old man.
After they let the holes they'd knocked in the gutter ripen a while, they finished the job of knocking it all out and digging a trench, which immediately filled up with rainwater. I'd been photographing the progress, and was happy to snap a few shots of our moat. Fortunately, Sarah didn't seem inclined to run off and try to jump in it. When the moat had mellowed out a bit, they came back and poured a snappy new curb for us. They did it while I was at work, no doubt guessing that the wet cement would be irresistible to an artist like me. Yeah, I'm an artist, buddy. By coincidence, I also did cement work for one day, many years ago, and on return visits to my home town I can impress people with the fact that I worked on a sidewalk, a wall, and a fountain that are still visible at the public library (though I'm not sure it's still a fountain). I never saw the cement workers, so it's possible they knew of my experience and didn't want to tucker me out by having me repeat my anecdotes on the subject.
The new curb is an improvement over the old one, being on a level with the sidewalk. No more dirt residue collecting at the end of the walk. No more weeds taking root in the dirt to mock at me. Our yard, however, is now an opportunity zone. They dug up a lot of dirt, piled it on the lawn, and scraped it off to fill in the moat, leaving a small glacier's worth of small rocks to tempt the lawn mower (which someone else pushes, so my concern here is kind of noble, actually), which I am gradually picking up and tossing back into the holes in the asphalt out front where it doesn't meet up with the cement. The front three or four feet of grass no longer exists. It's like it's waiting for a sidewalk that isn't going to come. We're thinking we'll spade the dirt some and mulch it and border it off from the grass and eventually put bushes along the front, leaving gaps for dragging bags of leaves from our two very productive trees. Those trees are the earliest shedders on the block, and have already started heaving leaves left and right. When they finish, we'll enjoy some weeks of seeing leaves in everyone else's yard except ours.
Anyway, I should hurry up and toss more gravel in the hole, because they're about to repave the street. We'll have a week or less of inconvenience -- sorry for the neighbor who has to load up a moving van this week! -- and then we'll have a smooth street out front, instead of the present agglomeration of variously shaped patches. I wonder what the ducks think of all this, or if they even notice. ("Lotta trucks in the street today, but nobody got out to feed me." "Ya gotta wonder." "I hadn't noticed, frankly." "AFLAC!")
After they let the holes they'd knocked in the gutter ripen a while, they finished the job of knocking it all out and digging a trench, which immediately filled up with rainwater. I'd been photographing the progress, and was happy to snap a few shots of our moat. Fortunately, Sarah didn't seem inclined to run off and try to jump in it. When the moat had mellowed out a bit, they came back and poured a snappy new curb for us. They did it while I was at work, no doubt guessing that the wet cement would be irresistible to an artist like me. Yeah, I'm an artist, buddy. By coincidence, I also did cement work for one day, many years ago, and on return visits to my home town I can impress people with the fact that I worked on a sidewalk, a wall, and a fountain that are still visible at the public library (though I'm not sure it's still a fountain). I never saw the cement workers, so it's possible they knew of my experience and didn't want to tucker me out by having me repeat my anecdotes on the subject.
The new curb is an improvement over the old one, being on a level with the sidewalk. No more dirt residue collecting at the end of the walk. No more weeds taking root in the dirt to mock at me. Our yard, however, is now an opportunity zone. They dug up a lot of dirt, piled it on the lawn, and scraped it off to fill in the moat, leaving a small glacier's worth of small rocks to tempt the lawn mower (which someone else pushes, so my concern here is kind of noble, actually), which I am gradually picking up and tossing back into the holes in the asphalt out front where it doesn't meet up with the cement. The front three or four feet of grass no longer exists. It's like it's waiting for a sidewalk that isn't going to come. We're thinking we'll spade the dirt some and mulch it and border it off from the grass and eventually put bushes along the front, leaving gaps for dragging bags of leaves from our two very productive trees. Those trees are the earliest shedders on the block, and have already started heaving leaves left and right. When they finish, we'll enjoy some weeks of seeing leaves in everyone else's yard except ours.
Anyway, I should hurry up and toss more gravel in the hole, because they're about to repave the street. We'll have a week or less of inconvenience -- sorry for the neighbor who has to load up a moving van this week! -- and then we'll have a smooth street out front, instead of the present agglomeration of variously shaped patches. I wonder what the ducks think of all this, or if they even notice. ("Lotta trucks in the street today, but nobody got out to feed me." "Ya gotta wonder." "I hadn't noticed, frankly." "AFLAC!")
