Landscaping and Neighbours

It seems that our landlord is a complete douchebag, so I took it upon myself to pick up the trash that mysteriously appears every day on the lawn, by the parking lot, around the garden and other spots that the wind and tunnel effect spews schoolkids' leftover lunches. And drugs.

Anyway, my very least favourite chore is picking up trash. The candy and chip wrappers aren't too bad because they aren't filled with goop or shit (so far), and there aren't massive piles lying around, only scattered. But what I hate the most is that the garbage is mixed with the leaves that a certain idiot landlord believes will decompose on their own, sitting in untouched, weed-infested and barren corners of the yard. It's even worse - they're leaves that the wind tunnel also scattered from the yard of the school.

(One of the things I should have suggested during that meeting two weeks ago between the school, the police, and the neighbourhood was that the school get these goddamn messy kids to come and clean up their trash because I was tired of doing it... but it was mostly about drugs and they didn't even have a concrete program to deter it.)

I was just outside a moment ago, picking up leaves and trash. I don't have a rake nor large garbage bags, so I was doing it by (gardening) fork and grocery bag. I also took some time to weed out some massive dandelions sprouting between the paving stones. It's quite time-consuming, but it would definitely help prevent more from spreading and aggravating our allergies further.

We noticed that our side porch was excessinely sagging some time ago. I suspected it was because the soil under it was sinking, but there is probably much more to that. During May and June when there are crazy rain storms, the entire walkway on this area gets flooded. Foot-high flooding. Fortunately none of the water gets into the basement. Unfortunately because of that, the landlord doesn't do shitall about it. Thus, due to years of flooding and soil being inevitably washed away, the ground has sunk a good couple of inches. You can feel the angle of depression walking around there.

The porch itself now feels precariously unbalanced. There is evidence on the side of the foundation that the steps have sunk about an inch or two each. I'm getting kind of nervous about the stability of this thing, but we don't have young kids jumping around on it so I don't think there's much to worry about yet.

I did dig up a couple of paving stones to see if I could determine what could be done, but I have no idea what to do. There is nothing for me to compensate for the sagging walkway, and I'm no carpenter who can fix porches and fancy wooden stuff.

As I was putting the stones back, there was some sort of repairs going on next door that necessitated cutting down some electrical or telephone cable. The people repairing the wires never suggested I get away from the area, and they didn't mention anything being too dangerous to touch, so I mostly ignored them.

That is, until they turned on the chainsaw. Suddenly wood chips from above were raining down on me. I looked up, and they were chopping something down from a pole. I quickly scurried away like a rat, kind of pissed that they weren't even considerate of me "down there" pulling up stupid roots and picking up leaves. Once inside, I watched the rain of dust and woodchips piling up around the area where I just picked up other people's crap.

I've been hiding at home since then. They're still humming away at their chainsaws and wires. People are utter morons around here.

I don't have a broom either.