Trash Talking

I've had to adjust, moving from a city of nearly a million people to a municipality of only a few thousand.  Sure, there's a proper city within an hour's drive but with only about 100,000 residents, it's small potatoes.  I've been meaning to write more about this ongoing transition, but a lot of what I've had to adjust to has turned out to be far more enjoyable than expected, and I've easily slipped into new routines that now seem so comfortable and natural. 

One change still feels kind of weird: dealing with our garbage.  When I hear couples argue about who brought the garbage cans back from the curb, who left the lids off and whose responsibility it is to move those cans twenty feet, I want to knock their heads together.  Hubs and I (although sometimes it's just me), collect, bag and tag our garbage and then drive it many kilometers to our municipal landfill, which has somewhat inconvenient and limited hours.  Each tag costs 50 cents, but we get an annual allotment plus a free bag tag for each bag of recycling we bring in.  It's an open pit landfill, with black bears strolling around.  We stand in the back of our truck and heave our bags so they fly as far as possible into the pit. 

Sometimes it smells, as you might expect, and it's normally super muddy, but in the winter it's not so bad.  At first I was horrified by this process, but now, even though it still feels strange, I've grown to like this household chore and I loiter there more than Hubby would like.  There's something kind of powerful about seeing all of this garbage against a beautiful, rural backdrop.  It's eery and horrifying, but in some ways strangely beautiful.  In the city, folks are so removed from the collective amount of waste produced, thanks to door to door trash collection, but also because the landfill in our nearest city is a giant trash compactor and you don't see anything but a large silver machine.  It seems so neat and tidy.  Here, though, it's just heaped and sometimes the wind takes pieces, obscuring a beautiful landscape.  It makes me really mindful of the garbage we produce.  I hope it's encouraging Hubby and I to produce less waste - we definitely produce less than when we lived in the townhouse.  It certainly makes me think more about garbage.

On an uplifting note, the picking is awesome.  There's a shed for people to leave things for free, and I've scored mittfuls of vintage goodies - incuding turquoise Pyrex (I've left treasures too).  On instagram I hashtag these finds #goodneighbourshed, but I've only shared a few finds.  I've absconded with quite a bit more than I've let on.  I have yet to pluck something from the actual landfill, but there was a box of vintage dishware - just out of reach - that had me thinking about wading in.

The Good Neighbour Shed!

After we moved into the lakehouse, we devised a system for garbage that was not totally unlike what we used before.  In Ottawa we had a garbage bin and then a black bin and blue bin for recycling.  Here we bought a huge new garbage can that holds colossal GLAD bags so we can cram in as much garbage as possible - I really cling to those 50 cent bag tags (could I be any more miserly?).  We bought another huge can for blue bag recycling.  I re-use a carboard box for paper recycling to save a blue bag (miserly!).  Inside the house, a cute aqua bin collects recycling under the kitchen sink, and I bring it outside to sort almost everyday (I try to make trips outside with Szuka fruitful, much to her chagrin - she'd rather we just play).  I haven't really devised a good system for our garbage inside.  Our old step-can was in the way in our small kitchen and so I used a random lid-less can I found in the house, that the old owner's left behind.  I stuffed it underneath the kitchen sink when we were working on the house, and there it stayed.  At one point I used GLAD kitchen catchers but when they ran out, I started stuffing various plastic bags I accumulated into the empty box.  It seemed cheaper, but these bags often leaked and some were a tight fit for the can.

When GLAD offered to send me some product and sponsor a post on trash talking, I was happy for an excuse to ramble on about our landfill and the weirdness of handling our own trash to such an extent, but I was a bit reluctant to use the kitchen catchers.  Surely what I was using was just as good?  And free!  Well, the odor-guard kitchen catchers have sure come along way since I bought my last box.  These new odour-guard bags with Febreeze are fabulous because although they smell perfumed coming out of the box, once they've been in the bin they don't smell flowery.  Instead, they neutralize any odor really well, without just masking it.  It was never atrocious under there because I take the garbage out to garage regularly, but it is garbage so it didn't smell like roses.  After testing these bags for weeks, I don't smell anything!  It just smells clean under the sink - these bags are perfect for use with my open can.  And they fit the can with room to spare - no more leaks thanks to too-tight bags splitting.  I'm sold.

I haven't tried the compostable bags because we don't compost.  Isn't that horrible?  I feel a lot of guilt about that.  I didn't realize until recently that our dump has a compost section.  I thought we had to compost ourselves, and with my lack of interest in gardening, Szuka the digger, and our bear problem, composting seemed like a nightmare.  I'll have to make some room under the sink for a compost pail and start!

This post was sponsored by GLAD and I also received product to try out.  The idea for this post and all words and photos are my own - as is the embarrassment I endured taking photos at the dump.  I wasn't super keen on showing you the under the sink area, because its only redeeming features are that it's clean (go me!) and it boasts a pretty a pretty aqua can (thanks Umbra!).  I have not washi taped or pattern papered anything.  Bad blogger!  While garbage and garbage accoutrements are certainly not the sexiest topics to blog about, particularly in the absence of any beautification, products that make our day to day lives a little nicer are worth their weight in gold! I'm happy for this opportunity to re-think what products I'm using. Maybe getting stuck with my garbage for a month won't be quite so smelly this summer? Stupid landfill hours.

Bearly a Problem

It's embarrassing to admit, but when we first moved from the city to our rural lakehouse, I was scared out of my gourd.  The woods - at night! - tops the list of my irrational fears.  A lifetime of scary movies has taught me that bad things happen in the wood at night.  Shortly before the move, we started watching The Walking Dead, and that's when I learned that the woods can be terrifying during the day too.  The episode in which Hershel's idyllic, country farm is overrun by walkers hit a little too close to home and that's when I stopped watching.  Only recently have I been able to come home in the dark without spending half an hour parked in the driveway, petrified with fear of what's lurking outside and trying to screw up the courage to open the door.  I can now stand on the deck at night while Szuka does her evening perimeter check/pee, instead of cowering inside with all of the lights on.  When something goes bump in the night I'm not immediately drenched in sweat, certain that my untimely demise is imminent.

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Despite the bevy of irrational fears that have shaped my experience of country life, I haven't - until recently - been afraid of more plausible threats, like bears.  I've seen black bears, here and there, but I always felt safe in my backyard because black bears, we're told, tend to avoid people.  Predatory black bear attacks, although horrific and gruesome when they happen, are really very rare.  Still, habituated bears - those that are accustomed to humans and aren't afraid - are worrisome.

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Recently I shared a photo on Instagram of one of our apple trees with a branch ripped almost clean off.  I suspected a bear, and it was confirmed last week when a neighbour anxiously banged on our front door to let us know a bear was in our apple tree, high among the branches, and refusing to budge.  He eventually ran off, but she was really concerned by how unfazed he was by our presence.

The neighbour told me someone else in the area had been confronted by a giant, 200+ lb black bear, who determinedly, yet slowly, approached her while she was out walking.  She in turn slowly backed away but he followed, so she tried to make herself big and tall and noisy but still he confidently moved toward her (probably not unlike the curious bear in this video).  He was only scared away by a passing truck.

This description sounded eerily like what might happen before a predatory attack.  For the first time, I became afraid of what's actually lurking out there, in the woods.  I felt somewhat safe because Szuka is always by my side (and she's a big girl), but then I read that dogs can be the worst around bears: some run up to a bear and nip it, then turn around and run back to their owner with the bear in hot pursuit.  Szuka, still just an adolescent and fun-loving pup, is goofy enough to do that.

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I decided to do a little research and see what I could do - in addition to buying bear bangers and bear spray, which I stocked up on - to keep bears away (plus what to do in the case of an encounter!).  The number one rule for keeping safe in bear country?  Hide food sources (garbage, compost, etc).  That's kind of a no-brainer, and despite my former penchant for fox-feeding, we've been diligent about not leaving food out.  I have no idea what possessed the former owner to plant two juicy apple trees between the house and the garage.  But then I saw this photo of a woman feeding a black bear and I realized that sometimes smart people just do stupid things.

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We had been meaning to chop the trees down, but last fall there were no confirmed signs of bears coming to our yard (we thought we saw bear poop, but now I'm not so sure), and so it hadn't seemed urgent.  Plus, we liked the leafy privacy they afforded.  Well, it turns out that last year there was a big bear hunt in the area that eradicated the bears, but without an organized hunt this year, more black bears began appearing.

A couple of Instagram friends told me we could interrupt the fruit cycle and still keep the trees.  I thought that might be a good idea but suddenly the fruit tree removal seemed very urgent.  The persistent little black bear started appearing daily and I was worried he'd bring bigger, even bolder friends.  Even though he's small, I knew that he could still do damage if provoked - especially if he took a swipe at Szuka.  He tended to appear around the time we went outside to play fetch - and I started to wonder how many times he'd been only a few feet away without us realizing.  One night I decided to read about every fatal bear attack in North America in the last hundred years, and it had me wishing for a comforting episode of The Walking Dead.  Did you know that a woman was mauled to death in her kitchen when a black bear burst through her window and attacked her?!?  Hubby and I decided, definitively, that the trees needed to go.  Right now.  Luckily, my father-in-law was kind enough to drop what he was doing and come by with a chainsaw.  He expertly cut down the trees (digging up the ground around them so the sawed off stump won't protrude) and then we bagged up all of the apples.  I still need to cut down and dispose of the heap of branches, but the larger chunks of wood we'll dry out and burn.  We mourned the apple trees a little, and the heap of brush has certainly not added curb appeal, but I feel a lot better now that the lure of delicious applies is gone.

The bear will still come back for a bit, out of habit, until he realizes that the apple buffet has officially closed.  The neighbours have blueberries that have yet to ripen so it's entirely possible that he'll still be hanging around the area, snacking.  Hopefully, though, no additional bears will be drawn to our yard because we never leave out anything tasty.  At least by the time our little guest grows to his full size, our apple trees will be a distant memory.  In the meantime, I'm not going outside without bear bangers and bear spray, plus I've put a giant bell on Szuka's collar so we don't accidentally crash a teddy bear picnic.

See ya, little guy.

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