Spring Green Renewal

Pretty much every culture, I’m guessing, has discovered that in the springtime, when young men aren’t busy thinking about love, the sun is reborn and life returns to the planet. In my neck of the woods, this means the weeds flourish.

I do have the best weed eradicator on the planet that doesn’t produce milk. It’s a hand tool, about a foot long, that has a soft rubber grip and a head comprised of one flat, square spade about an inch and a half wide and another that’s the same size but has four teeth a couple inches long.

I’ve never used the flat side yet, but the pronged end is most excellent. I can stand, or bend over, and with a couple good whacks at the dirt surrounding the weed, pick it up roots and all. Crabgrass, in particular, has no defense against this attack.

After filling my city-supplied green trash can, the one for yard trimmings, and setting it out to be picked up this morning, I was more than slightly annoyed to discover that, in picking it up, the city’s machine crushed my green bin in half. Not only did this make an incredible mess on the street, which I mostly winced at and ignored, it necessitated a phone call on my part to the city agency to get the bin replaced.

That took about half an hour, total, or less than a minute talking with the lovely bureaucrat. The conversation went something, roughly, like this:

Her: How can I help you?
Me: I need a new green bin. The truck tore mine in half.
Her: What’s the bin’s serial number?
Me: P6G 026410
Her: Your address?
Me:
Her: Put it out on the street Tuesday, and we’ll replace it. Not this Tuesday, next one, April first.
Me: April first? Is that a joke?
Her: (Laughs) No.

Two things about this strike me as interesting. Not only do I have a lot more weeding to do and get rid of, but now I have to struggle through with a crippled bin for two weeks of hydraulic excesses. The odds of the bin surviving are slim, but I have no choice.

Second, and perhaps more interesting, is that our bins all have serial numbers that the government, somehow, considers very important. I hate to think how much money is spent maintaining that database, or how it would ever be remotely useful. I suppose a case could be made for tracking survivability of the bins, but to store and track every one of the city’s several million bins just to see how long they last seems inefficient, at best. Just note, after they’re returned, when they were sent out. Since they all have bar codes, why any consumer would need to know and report the number is just silly.

Are they worried about theft? I’ve never known any bin to go missing or seen any, like shopping carts, littering the landscape. I sincerely doubt it’s the existence of the serial number that’s coming them from being pilfered and put to use in meth labs or used to smuggle illegal immigrants.
But, no matter what, I should be getting a sparking new green bin next month. Just in time to coincide with heater filter replacement and my mortgage payment!