I’ve noticed that there are some pretty good garbage scavengers in my neighborhood. Most appliances that aren’t completely wrecked get hauled away by someone in a beat up pick up truck. More power to folks to who makes something out stuff like that.
Over the weekend, my neighbor was working on his in ground pool project. He had a nice big dump truck parked in his driveway and was loading debris with a Bobcat. I asked him if I could sneak about a half a cubic yard of assorted rocks and patio blocks that I’ve harvested out of the yard over the last 5 years into the dump truck (since I’m pretty sure the city trash collection wouldn’t take them.)
Being the nice guy that he is, he said, “sure, you wanna borrow a wheelbarrow to get the out?” I said, “super, I’ll get right on it.” So, 5 trips later and one slightly crushed finger later, all the rocks were at the curb. I got distracted and my neighbor wrapped up for the night. So, the rock pile sat at the curb over night.
When I started chores on Sunday morning, I looked out the window and thought the rock pile looked smaller. Nah, I’m just imagining it. A little while later I looked again as I pulled out of the driveway. It was smaller.
Sometime over night (its not garbage night, btw), someone spotted some slate in the pile and dug out 10 pieces of slate. Probably 150 lbs. Whoa, that’s kinda impressive. If I’d know that slate was such a hot item, I would have put them to the curb years ago instead of letting them sit untouched in my backyard for so long.
Later in the day, I caught up with my neighbor again and he pulled the Bobcat over and in one bucket got the remaining 300 lbs of rocks into the dump truck. Nice!
Garbage savaging is a give and take operation. Last week, the same neighbor was getting rid of a very nice outdoor play house for kids. I slid over and asked if I could take it. They said no problem. I dragged into my yard, gave it a scrub down, and the kids love it (pics in a follow up post.)
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