Gutter Garden -- How Embarrassing

Sometimes one's place is just an embarrassment, with maintenance flaws in full view. That was the case with one stretch of my gutter facing the river. There's just not an easy way to clean it, and so I didn't. First grasses were visible growing out of it, and then something that looked like a bush or small tree. People would paddle or float by and laugh and comment. Finally I got worried that having a blocked-up gutter might damage the house. 

I gave myself a sunny Sunday morning to tackle it. I asked my neighbor Courtney to come over and spot for me while I climbed up the ladder with a hoe taped with another into an extra-long pole. I strapped the tall extension ladder to a trellis so that it wouldn't move. Courtney came over and looked at the ladder and looked at me and volunteered to go up herself, since she's taller and has longer arms. I accepted her offer. She got some of it out, but a lot of it wouldn't budge.

Then suddenly, here comes a person walking across the roof--her next-door neighbor, Tom Hekker. "What are you guys doing?" he asked with a laugh. He walked over to the gutter, pulled out the remaining "garden," tossed it in the river and walked back across the roof home. We couldn't even figure out how or where he got up on my roof and he wouldn't say. After Courtney left, I went and reached down and picked up the line of plantings, now floating, to take pictures of what had been. I lined them up on my deck and left them there as a reminder that some maintenance tasks ought not be left undone.