Nope, it’s not Christmas, and that wasn’t a sledful of reindeer that got me out into the garden. It was Jane with an extension ladder and the determination to actually clean the gutters.
I wasn’t about to leave her solo out there, especially with an aluminum ladder and power lines: I’m sure she got tired of hearing, “Watch the power line.”
But the gutter was packed with, yes, compost, which we are going to be using on the flowers: half a decade or more of no-cleaning, in which the hemlock needles have piled up and composted and begun to grow flowers. Charming, but Jane considers it tacky, so she got up there and started hauling out a 3-4″ layer of old crud by hand.
Bravo. I was willing to sidewalk-superintend. But she had a system going and I could only stand and admire.
Only 3 more sides of the house to go.
In the Navy, we refer to that as working aloft. Whenever someone is working aloft, there must be a safety observer on the deck below who cannot take their eyes off the person aloft.
Flowers in the hemlock needles, well, I recall we once had a maple tree seedling growing out of a hole in our roof.
With such seriously plugged gutters you are lucky that the snow/ice melt didn’t back up under the shingles. A friend had to have major ceiling repairs after such an adventure.
Especially after last year’s 5′ snow, the most Spokane has had since the snowy 70’s. You’ll recall we lost no few businesses in town, many near us, with flat roofs and not-ready-for-big-snowfall construction. It got so bad I was worried about somebody being seriously flattened if the snow-cornice over the back door broke off.
I’m not good on ladders. Jane doesn’t like them. But she’s 10 years my junior, and has a bit more oomph when it comes to a job like that. I think I could still do it, but thanks to Jane, it got done.
My dad does this every year or so (and I’ve helped him every so often). He gets onto the roof and clambers around on his haunches right above the gutters, pulling the old leaves out—with his bare hands! I use gloves when I do it!
One time, he stood up, overbalaced, and fell off the roof—luckily we’ve a one-storey house and he had a safe landing!
ew. Sounds particularly nasty, athough pictures of the flowers would have been interesting. You might want to see if your Lowe’s or other hardware stores have some plastic grates you can pop in at the top of the gutters to keep most of the leaves etc from taking root. We had problems with lots of ponderosa pine needles (which are very long) and juniper and oak leaves clogging everything. The plastic grates have a very tight mesh over a polka dot pattern — lets the water in and keeps particles out. We’ve had them up for several years now and have had no problems.
Yep, we have gutter guard: it’s the short (half-inch) hemlock needles that get through and then cause problems. But it’s pretty good for as long as this clean-out has been neglected…from way before we got the house.