Sprouting Gutters? Time to Clean!

I tend not to pay attention to my roof gutters most of the time; deliberately ignoring most of the evils that lie within their depths.  But living in a house surrounded by tall trees does eventually force me to face the fact that most of the foliage ends up on the roof and in the gutter.  You see, when plants and weeds start sprouting from the gutter, it is quite difficult to ignore this fact any longer!  I can “la di da – I can’t see it” all I want but when neighbors start commenting on my gutter garden,  I know it’s time to clean.

When the gutters get so full of gunk it also clogs up the downspouts.  Rain, with nowhere to go, just pours over the gutter.  This is also another fact that is difficult to ignore; I live in the very rainy Pacific Northwest.  Dodging and dashing through the gutter deluge becomes an active sport.

Luckily (because I am frugal and hate to hire out), I have a nimble teenage son who loves the chance to go on the roof.  He doesn’t really mind cleaning gutters either – in fact, he scoops out all the muck with his bare hands!  So after borrowing my neighbor’s ladder, and a quick lesson on ladder adjusting, my son was up on the roof.  He deftly bends over the gutter scooping out and then flinging the gunk to the ground.  I had to clean up the ground gunk, but glad I wasn’t up on the roof!  I was doing enough fretting and directing from the ground.

The gutters are now spanking clean, and just in time.  We had massive rainstorms the next couple of days, and all the rain ran into the gutter and down the spout brilliantly!  It was nice to have them working again.  The one slight irritation is the sound of water going down the downspout; I had almost forgotten what that sounded like.  As luck would have it, I have a downspout right outside my bedroom window; so all night long – gurgle, gurgle, whoosh, whoosh! But actually it was kind of soothing… the sound of a job well done.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” –Oscar Wilde

~Marilyn

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