Leaves, leaves, everywhere ... and not a leaf to sweep! Three cheers for the City of Portland and Neighbors West Northwest: Hip, hip, hooray!

Portland is loaded with trees. And you know that a goodly number of trees lose their leaves in the fall. What seemed unusual to Mama and me was that trees up here lose their leaves all year long. For instance, all summer over in southeast Portland we saw leaves piled high on cars that appeared to have not been driven in weeks or months. When we got settled here in northwest Portland in October, more and more leaves fell, clumping and lumping on the streets beside the sidewalks, clogging the drain grates at intersections--not everywhere but enough so that I noticed it when I parked the car and bumped-de-bumped over sort of long ridges of wet, pulpy leaves.



Then, the next to last week of November, for blocks around our building, signs like the one you see above blanketed the neighborhood. Didn't take much for us to figure out that something was up, but what? We'd seen similar signs posted when moving vans were to arrive the next day or when houses were being remodeled and had those second-story-trash-removal-chutes that have to dump into the back of a truck.

But what could be causing these signs to be up and down the streets, all over the place? Naturally I got online and here's what I discovered. Three scheduled times each year, the city and the neighborhood association join forces to clean the streets, ridding them in one fell swoop of leaves. Well, it's really a series of five fell swoops as they divide and conquer the leaves.

The signs are not kidding about towing those foolhardy enough to leave their vehicles in the chosen area on its scheduled morning. The minimum amount you'd pay in 2006 if your vehicle got towed was $171; in 2007 it's $172, and it all depends on how quickly you can find out that your car has been towed and get it out of the tow lot. Of course, you'd think anybody'd realize that they'd left their car where it shouldn't be and that therefore it'd been towed. But, face it, if you're a brick-shy-of-a-load kinda person who LEFT the car, then you just might be slow on the uptake about getting it outta hock!

Roused by vehicle and shovel noise, I took the following photos when I was home sick on Dec. 1, with my teensy wonderful Nikon CoolPix, before the last charged batteries died and I headed back to bed!

Our second Northwest Clean Sweep happened on Good Friday, with the next two scheduled for July 27 and November 30.
One new thing I saw last week, the putting out of the signs. About 7:10 a.m. as I waited at NW 21st Avenue and Everett for the #17 bus, I noticed a good-sized flat-bed truck moving slowly through the intersection. What could that be, piled just so on the bed and not sliding off? Just as quickly as I thought that, it hit me that the stacks and stacks were the little yellow sign holders. In the next second two guys walking slowly beside the truck each grabbed a sign, folded it open as he walked to the sidewalk where each one set down his sign, going on and on like a well-oiled machine until they were out of sight. They were moving way too quick for me to get my camera out and turn it on! After workmI got this the close-up of a sign on NW 22nd Avenue.


NW Everett from Mama's bedroom window--totally without parked cars. If you click on it, you get an out-of-focus look at the masses of leaves, many in layers at least five inches deep, and the string of yellow-legged signs.


Here at the intersection, as seen from the kitchen window, is one of a fleet of dump trucks. Quicker than you could jump into a pile of raked leaves, these dump trucks became filled with a load of leaves, resembling giant cauldrons of lumpy brown soup that lapped the sides of the dump truck bed when the truck had to stop for a tow truck to go by, or regular city traffic.


On the left you've got just one of the towings I saw; on the right the street cleaner truck comes along after the leaves have been picked up from that side of the street.


A car this time.


This is a much better picture for you to click on to get an idea of the amount of leaves. Plus, you can see the little vehicle that scrapped the leaves in front of it into piles to be picked up and put into the dump trucks. It's on the top right side of the photo; to its right, a tow truck is hooking up someone's vehicle. You can see that the left side of the street has already been visited by the little vehicle. It shows up a bit better in the close-up I cropped for you.


Ah, there's the little vehicle, hard at work. Y'all remember those great big Richard Scary children's books? Wouldn't he have fun with this Northwest Clean Sweep?





In a staggered group of two, street cleaning machines with brushes and water get a close as possible to the curb.


This one is out of sequence but it does show that humans helped the machines by using shovels to break out clumps from the drain grates and those lumps of leaves sort of molded against the curb. I walk between the newspaper box and the sign post every morning on the way to the bus stop. During and after a hard rain, the puddle could look somewhat like this shot, maybe not so leaf-filled, but definitely extending way out from the curb, hence Weather Ready Woman's shiny black rubber boots!


Back story on the old black car which I believe I recognize as some sort of early 1970s Porsche: It sat without moving for about six weeks, across the street from us and up the hill just a bit, parked neatly at the curb. Current info: Evidently the engine was beyond functioning. A girl was at the wheel, a guy all alone in back until help arrived.


After traffic cleared the intersection, it rolled away, out of sight to the north on NW 22nd Ave. To get out of the area being swept on this particular morning, they had to push it a minimum of eight blocks. After that, don't you think all of the parking spaces had already been taken by people who'd moved their cars before the sweep began? I wonder how far they actually had to push the car. At least the street sloped down, even if they had to turn right to find a parking spot. If they had to turn left to find somewhere to park, they probably needed more helping hands--the area streets begin to rise rather quickly.