• Paying It Forward: Goodbye Weeds

Community Spirit begins with you, or in this case, with me.

The perfect storm of being between video projects, the weather being unusually mild and forgetting that I'm a lot older than I care to admit, culminated in spontaneously doing yard work in a common area. 

I'd been watching this weed grow for months. It's just west of the light at Cervera on Central.

I've long joked about tumbleweeds being Wildomar's unofficial flower. I just hope we can avoid our own "super bloom" this year.

My original goal was to remove a couple of the tumbleweeds before they got bigger and looked even worse. 

Here is the reverse angle view before I tackled it.

In the spirit of wanting to better the community, I set out from my house (less than a quarter of a mile away) with my green waste can in tow.

It was pretty easy getting this one out, so I went on to more.

Below you can see a before and after view. A lot can be accomplished while listening to a fully charged iPod. 

You can see the debris in the gutter. It's months of accumulated hay that falls from trucks that leave Round Up to the east.

Though it was perfect weather for such work, half way through I had to call my sweet wife Grace to pick me up for a short break and some water. Then worked for another two CD's worth of time (probably 90 minutes) until I got the area cleared. 

What I thought was going to be about 45 minutes turned into three hours. 

It's not easy to see in the photos below because there is a drainage ditch between the dirt path and the house that is clogged with vegetation and dirt. Strangely, the drainage ditch to the east of the intersection is clear (see further below).

Initially I just had a couple of tumbleweeds in mind, but once I started I couldn't stop until I'd cleared from the corner to past the speed limit sign and a little beyond.

Do you remember the classic Christmas movie Home Alone, when little Kevin McCallister made a mess of his house, then managed to clean it all up (yeah right), except for his big brother's room? 

That's basically what happened here. 

Those weeds had to go somewhere and into the drainage ditch they went. Now I'm just waiting to hear, "Kevin!!! What did you do to my room?" 

I mean, "Joseph!!! What did you do to my drainage ditch?" ☺

I bet I could clean that out in less than a year, but I'd probably have a stroke doing it.

Community spirit starts somewhere, and if you'd like to pay it forward, even if just in your own immediate area, consider doing it. It's a lot better option than whining about it on facebook.

In the coming fiscal year's budget there is room for another PV Maintenance full time truck and crew (our contracted workforce) to address street maintenance and I'm hoping that will translate into consistently cleaner streets in the coming months and years.

I have my eye on this stretch of sidewalk next.

One thing I'd like to bring up to city staff is finding out if we can implement our version of "Clean Extreme" like they do in Lake Elsinore. I'd like to see how other cities use volunteers and if it's something we can do here too. 

I'd also like to find out how feasible an "adopt a trail" program is, and if it can be used to maintain parts of our Grand Avenue Multi-use Trail once the leaning posts get fixed.

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We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.

– Winston Churchill

Wildomar Rap has been giving since day one.

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