A few days ago, arriving at the dogs’ favorite watering hole, we found that some troglodytes had made an extraordinary effort to ruin it. Plenty of places to dump stuff nearby, but they put it here: from one day to another.
But another day, and it wasn’t there anymore. Note arrow indicating sand road said troglodytes use to carry other trash to the middle of nowhere, and tend to their bees, cow fencing, etc. (of course none of this is actually their property). Maybe they dumped it where they did so they wouldn’t have to look at it?
And, being card-carrying troglodytes, they had to include plate glass in the load, positioned so that it would shatter when they dumped it. What would have been a 5-minute cleanup job became a 20-minute job because of that glass…
… now prominently on display across their “road.”
Will they get a message from this? I’d be very surprised. But if it causes a couple of obviously-unused synapses in their brains to fire for a nanosecond or two, well hey, mission accomplished.
It’s been over a week since I last posted, about dissecting a dead laser printer and discovering that it yielded several pounds of recyclable plastic. Today I was cleaning out files and found a photo taken a month ago.
Some low-functioning individual decided a more appropriate way to dispose of a broken printer would be to take it 180 meters from the nearest dwellings, and dump it in a field.
Meanwhile, doing a bit of spring cleaning – it’s amazing how much grows around the edges of those concrete plumbing junction box lids – I found that ants had been using this unused one as a dumping ground for sand as they made their nest under the patio. All the sand in the wheelbarrow came from that box, which means it probably came from below the wheelbarrow. Great!
After removing all the sand I could, I flushed the rest with the 3/4″ hose attached to our well. (Unfortunately not potable water.) “Someone” who saw the hose “come to life” decided it needed to be taught who’s in charge here. He managed to wrap it around this little orange tree three times, tightly.
Meanwhile “there’s something happening here” in the little park near the intendencia in Atlántida. And, as is to be expected, what it is ain’t exactly clear. Huge eucalyptus and pine trees cut down, all the tile torn up, and – nothing. The eucalyptus stump will send up new shoots; the pine in the foreground won’t.
The real question: will whatever they’re doing be complete in three months, when the summer season starts?
I usually let loose dogs Benji and Mocha (aka Choco Mocha Latte) to run with Syd and Gundy’s five dogs in the Villar Wilderness,1 but Benji’s still limping a bit from the accident, so I like to give him rest days. Which means walking each individually a few bocks around here on a leash while the other, forced to stay home, howls and cries and whimpers incessantly. Hard for Susan, and hardly a rest for me: after ten minutes, Benji finally ceases to be the equivalent of trying to restrain a runaway garden tractor. Mocha, on the other hand, is like a turbocharged small garden tractor with defective steering: slightly less forceful, but constant veering from left to right, making choking noises, and of course the classic back-right/cross/forward left wrap-the-walk-human-in-the-leash maneuver. Exactly what Benji did, but not something he taught Mocha. I thik that move is more instinctual.
Point is, I took them different directions, carefully selected rocks in pockets for the occasional loose and aggressive (if only playfully) neighborhood dog.
So I saw new stuff. After commenting yesterday on how often the trash containers have been emptied, in contrast to the recycling containers, this:
While it is true that most of the “dumpsters” near us have been well serviced, obviously some haven’t . Another day for this one, a few blocks from here, and no doubt there will be bags on the ground, eagerly torn apart by dogs, cats, and comadrejas (possums).
May be there was extensive waste from a party (as in this post), but it doesn’t look like that. Seems like one “they” forgot about. Notice the sliver of white in the lower right – that brush is piled on top of a discarded refrigerator. Maybe that has something to do with it?
1 In case you’re new here, this refers to 100+ hectares of no-man’s land, sandy scrub brush, islands of pine forest, seasonal water holes, cow pasture, burnt eucalyptus trunks, sand roads used by horses and motos/quads, punctuated by inexplicable trash deposits I have documented often, all north of the Ruta Interbalnearia in Villa Argentina.
I don’t recall when “they” introduced the recycling bins, probably 2012 or so. I see no particular pattern in emptying them; frequently, as recently, they become so overfilled that I simply throw recyclables in the trash bins. I’m sure “they” still go through trash as I documented in a post on 24 March 2012, which appears to have disappeared (500: internal error – bleh).
Where Syd and Gundy live, “they” have done away with the corner “dumpsters” and assigned each house two wheeled containers. One day a week “they” pick up trash, another day recyclables. I question the logic and economics , but no one is asking my opinion (especially the guy who sold the town council 1,000 wheeled household containers).
After the last recyclables overflow event, these signs appeared in the bin near us: “Please only recyclables. No trash!”
Which raises a question: when the recycling bins are consistently overflowing and the trash bin nearby is not, what exactly transpired to evoke this response?
I guess the answer is, it’s a different Ave Fenix. (Ave Fénix=Phoenix.)
Unrelated, I also learned today (via an article from 2014) that given RGB images for print projects, best not to convert them to CMYK before placing in InDesign documents. Fascinating, no?
For these two revelations, you are – from the bottom of my heart – most welcome.
There was something that didn’t seem right about that new dog-walk garbage dump we found a few days ago. Besides, of course, the whole concept of dragging stuff to discard it in the middle of nowhere when trash containers are ubiquitous.
To wit: two of the discarded windshields were unbroken.
Two days later, presumably still are, though no longer discarded.
I first encountered the term troglodyte when I lived in Malta, school year 1980-81. It connoted a type of brutish, neanderthal behavior of the lower-functioning Maltese, a connotation not politically correct in modern ‘Murkan Millenial Anti-Stoic society, but hey.
“Troglodyte” actually refers to cave dwellers, and in the sandy area we walk dogs, caves – despite the fixation of ever-digging dog Kiya – really don’t exist. Can’t exist.
Yet you encounter stuff like this:
Appeared yesterday: three car windshields. a yellow funnel, a yellow play soccer ball, a few other bits of garbage. Fortunately, the glass not shattered as in the previous dump of household goods, but who knows – give it a few days?
Let me add perspective. This (Syd may correct me) is where this appeared:
In other words, someone with a cart and horse took a deliberate 10-15 minute ride into “no man’s land” to dump materials that will not biodegrade, and which would have been removed, immediately or eventually, if deposited closer to dwellings.
Several months ago, Ralf and I (if I remember correctly), wandering far from the usual paths, encountered a little pond, apparently where someone at some point dug sand for construction. We’ve been fortunate to have decent rain this summer, so on this very hot and muggy day the dogs loved the stop. From left to right: Leah, Kiya, Sofia, Jordan (front), Benji, and what looks like a black lump in some grass, Lorena.
Further along, from one day to the next — in the middle of nowhere — appeared a pickup truck load of construction trash. Yes, even with abundant trash collection containers everywhere, some troglodytes decided the best way to deal with their trash would be to drive into a large empty area and start a trash pile there.
Which reminds me of a story. In nearby Parque del Plata, when the trash containers first appeared a few years ago, my friend Carlos and his wife embarked on the project of cleaning up the trash-dump empty lot diagonally across from them. They filled the “dumpster” over and over, until finally the lot was clean. Then Carlos spots a middle-aged man carrying a bag of garbage to the container. No, right past the container, to the middle of the lot, where he drops it on the ground. Carlos screams at him to use the trash container.
“But this is the way I’ve always done it,” he says.
Welcome to Uruguay.
Carlos, who is Uruguayan, tells me they did eventually “toilet train” that troglodyte.
The private workers actually left their work area very clean. Of course, the aesthetic appeal of the plants has been greatly reduced, but they’ll grow back.
Much of the waste, I expect, they left around the base of the plants, but that will return nutrients to the soil. On the ground in front is a piece similar to what they were packing into crates.
Meanwhile, near Syd’s place, the public workers actually did come back, and did remove the rest of the brush pile, and the other one around the corner!
But all the trash carefully removed from the brush pile remains in its own pile on the ground, just meters from an empty trash container. Because “not their department,” no doubt.
I spent enough years in the USA to be predisposed to a gung-ho, get-it-done attitude, and a respect for quality products and services, so a couple of things here stand out for me.
Tolerance of mediocrity: Chinese electric hand tools with a two-month warranty that cease operating after three, for example. Well, you might say, it’s poor country. And you’d be right. But you won’t find anyone here who disagrees that lo barato sale caro — false economy: cheap things end up being expensive. *Shrug* Es lo que hay. That’s what it is.
Lack of situational awareness: as with people at peak season who pause in the exit door of the supermarket to have a conversation, or bicyclists, motos, or pedestrians who cross streets without looking. And let’s not forget cars.
Here’s a photo that presents a lovely illustration of both.
The lady who apparently owns but doesn’t live at the end of Syd’s block had a hissy fit about the growing brush pile on her corner (but on the town right-of-way). She decided an appropriate response involved tearing the pile apart so that brush blocked both streets. Who did what next remains a mystery, but last week we returned from walking dogs to see two guys loading brush into a truck. Leaving Syd’s 5/6ths of the dog pack inside, we walked down to see if they’d be similarly taking away the 2+ year old brush pile next to Syd’s house. They indicated they would. Excellent!
They added that the current brush pile would require a second trip.
What you’re seeing in the photo is, left side, the remaining half of the brush pile. The blue and white stuff beyond is the non-brush trash that they carefully removed from the brush pile. The blue thing beyond that is (and was) an empty trash container that could have easily accommodated the trash they separated from the brush pile. But apparently for them when your job is to pick up brush, it doesn’t include leaving the street clean.
The rest of the story, as you might guess, is that they haven’t been back.
I’m guessing they will. Eventually. Meanwhile, es lo que hay.
It’s a perspective thing — the bucket is over half full.
I haven’t determined exactly how I’m going to incorporate fish waste into my close-to-totally-disorganized garden, but it will have to be dog-digging-proof. I have decided to make a substantial fence. But deciding is short of doing, and we happen to have a puppy who likes to dig — and meanwhile no fence.
Beyond remembered tales of American Indians dumping a fish head or carcass below each corn plant, my fish-in-the-garden story is this: shortly after arriving in Mexico in 2007, I attended an organic gardening class by a massively overweight American woman who happened to be very good at growing things. Actually, exceptionally good. She was also an outstanding cook and baker, and, unh huh, liked to eat. She had a plastic-lined pit in which she made compost tea from fish, and shared her secret source. There was, she said, at the end of a short two-block street that ended at the railroad tracks in Pátzcuaro, a place where they processed fish from the lake. You had to knock on an unmarked door, have containers, explain your request, and then, Hod willing and goods delivered, back out the two blocks, because there was no way to turn your car around.
Sorry, that’s above my pay grade.
She also explained how they cultivated contacts in the daily mercado for composting. They had to they dress down, relate to the locals, develop trusted relationships in order to get the valued vegetable waste. Wow. Heavy social investment.
Reference: there is no way a home gardener can get enough compost from home vegetable waste. You need organic materials from somewhere else.
Anyway, visiting a project of ours on Calle Independencia near the cemetery in Pátzcuaro, I discovered something amazing: garbage trucks appear there every afternoon. Guys with hand trucks and 55-gallon barrels go into the market and bring out the waste. I showed up day after day, with a plastic tub like the one I bought here, and soon they wanted to know before they went into the market: was there was anything in particular I favored? Onion greens? Carrot tops? It was deliciously ironic.
But it got better.
One day, a little truck pulled up. Fish waste. From the fish place. You know, the one where you had do a little ritual of obscure door-knocking and reverse-driving. I said to the garbage kid (remember, I’m an old fart, so everyone is a kid), fish is OK in the garden, eh? and he enthusiastically agreed and personally took my plastic tub to the truck and proudly filled it with fish heads and bones and guts, and placed it in the back of my several-years-old Toyota 4Runner.
Fortunately, I had a plastic-rubber floor liner. Because, in his enthusiasm, the kid had maximally-filled my plastic tub. And despite my caution, over the first tope — speed bump — I heard the flop of a fish carcass. On the next another. No matter. I could always hose that stuff off.
The problem arose — as today — when I realized that I had arrived home shortly before dinner time and actually had to do something with this treasure. In Mexico, it involved feverishly turning over my extensive compost pile, inserting fish waste, re-covering and weighting down plastic sheeting so our animals couldn’t get into it. It worked. And apparently fertilized magnificently, but by then we were the hell out of Mexico. Another story that I probably won’t tell here.
Meanwhile, here, a couple concrete blocks over the bucket this evening. Tomorrow? Stay tuned 😉
Thanks for reading this. Gardening is weird at times, no?
