Uh huh. Trash, garbage, and tumbleweed, crack vials and condoms all over the place. Sounds like paradise. 
The properties where I live are well kept. It has always been a neighborhood where people take pride in its appearance. This is why it really surprised me when I went out for a walk yesterday evening and passed one house that had an old mattress leaning up against the wall on the front porch. It stood out like a sore thumb.
Around the middle of February, Portland and down the Willamette valley was hit hard with an ice storm. West Linn is sometimes referred to as tree city. In addition to the native trees; firs, pines and oaks, many more have been added to the landscape, either by home owners or the city. Anyway, our city was hit hard by the storm. Trees were down everywhere and many of those that weren't, suffered so much damage they had to be cut down, I was lucky. Aside from a few branches which broke off of the several large trees on my property and littered the ground, I only lost one tree completely and that was a Japanese maple in the back yard which sustained a split trunk and many broken branches.
For a several weeks following the storm, West Linn looked like a war zone. The curbs and parking strips in front of people's homes were pilled high with broken limbs and yard debris. The city hauled all of it away. Now, other then a few scraggly trees and a lot of tree stumps in the meridians and parks you'd almost not know there was an ice storm.
The arborist I have used for tree maintenance for many years took out the split Japanese Maple and cleaned up broken branches in the other trees which had not yet fallen and were a danger. I chose not to pile the storm debris in the street and wait for the city to take it away. The week after the storm, the gardeners hauled away two dump truck loads of tree branches littering my yard.
Poll
