| Weather | sunny and mild |
| Temperature | 58F / 15C |
| Mood | I had a guest garbage grabber, how nice! |
| Restoring nature | 1 hour |
Welcome to another garbage gab from the life of this chronically ill, but more fortunate than most earthling. Today I had a special assistant that came out with me on my trashabout, my wife. At first she was patient with me stopping frequently picking up litter. I started at the Lemon Hill trail. I am struggling with Morton’s neuroma in multiple spots in my left foot, and I think I may have a little zone in my right foot too. It’s good for me to stop. Stopping reduces impact. Less impact means less pain to the brain.
Starting off on the trail, I picked up more broken glass than anything at first with my work gloves. They have a strong protective blue layer of rubber over the fingers and palm area. I do not know if I would ever trust a pair of gloves without that protection. I am spoiled now. Eventually my wife asked for a work glove. I gave her my left glove. She got into helping me. There was plenty of litter around. Where there are people, there’s litter. Where there are good picnic spots, there is usually more litter. Where there are parked cars by nature, these areas usually win the most litter trophies in my experience.
We walked half the trail and worked our way back towards home. You may not believe it, but if you walk a trail cleaning up litter, you are going to miss some of it. You will probably miss more than you would expect. Light, shadows, angles, plants, weeds, nature scenes, and even other litter can easily help nearby litter evade your senses.
I was calling out the litter as I saw it. Maybe that is what got my wife interested in helping. Collectively, we probably gathered about 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) of litter. I know because I was carrying my litter bag for while before a relatively empty trash can appeared. My left foot in particular does not enjoy extra weight carrying things at present. Sadly, I found a bunch of narcotic items today. I will save the funny one, then the sad ones for the visual story. It was nice to have a helper to verbalize my inner thoughts while cleaning. At one point, I was the only one cleaning, and two guys on a park bench thanked us. My wife was “thanked by association.” Three small groups said thank you. It feels good to be appreciated. I appreciate you for reading my random meandering of the day. Now onto that visual story I mentioned a bit ago…
Those daffodils must be getting the best sun from the northwest – that’s the way their yellow heads are facing for the most part
