Monday, March 26, 2007

My Apartment Complex Needs Work

It's been driving me nuts, but as essentially lazy person who can barely manage to keep her own apartment clean, I've not made a big fuss about it beyond a phone call. But my apartment complex, and my building in particular, is looking decidedly seedy. I live in the back on ground level, and the condition of the siding is appalling, to say the least; the paint is peeling off in great strips and looks positively leprous. I think they've let it go because it's hidden from view; better to spend funds on upkeep where new tenants can see it!

The thing that annoys me the most at present is the carelessness of the grounds crew. They ripped up all of the drainage around the building and buried plastic flexible drain pipes... but tossed the old concrete basins upside down and left them. They've been there almost 2 years now.

At the front center breezeway, they have some monkey grass and 2 hosta beds, one on each side of the walkway. But they have allowed tree seedlings to sprout in the beds, and have made no effort to uproot them.

Figure 1: Hosta bed with small tree sprouting.

In my annoyance with said seedling, I decided that perhaps it needed to draw attention to itself: "excuse me... I don't think I'm supposed to be here...!" So I crocheted a shawl for it. Pehaps the grounds crew would uproot it now...

Figure 2: Unidentified tree with Shawl


As you can see, it's growing quite fast!

Figure 3: Wide view of Tree with Shawl


This past week, the shawl disappeared. Perhaps someone was as frustrated with the lax grounds crew as I, but did not realize this was an effort to draw attention to the need for uprooting. Perhaps they thought it no longer needed a shawl with the bright, sunny spring weather we've been having.


So, the volunteer tree still stands. I now watch it to see how long the grounds crew will continue to show complete indifference.

1 comment:

Mike Howell said...

TN is the volunteer state.