Tonight the salters came out and I felt the all wheel drive kick in on my Subaru while heading to the Minooka Dog Park. Earlier Kanook and I were at Brookfield's Mitchell Park where the northwestern sky turned dark grey and soon a blizzard of snow pellets lashed down at us. People that I met muttered something about global warming.

Back home, there are still some leaves hanging on to the branches of my maple tree. Saturday I hauled a few trash cans of chopped leaves to the dump where I was chastised for not putting them against the wall. Sorry, I'm not a mind reader and all the leaves in the pile seemed like they would welcome some more.

I still have some leaves to contend with. I can probably mulch them with the lawn mower, but as I'm on vacation this week, I spent much of the afternoon looking for clear plastic bags and a mechanical partner to hold the bag open. Two hardware stores, a Home Depot and a Walmart later, none had anything that I wanted. There are plenty of large paper bags but sitting by the curb for the few weeks until pick-up will likely have them fall apart and looking worse than the neighbors who have raked leaves by the road thinking that they will still be picked up.

Driving around town I see a lot of leaves piled by the curb and often flowing into the street. Perhaps some are still scheduled to be picked up, but I know my ward is finished so that makes me wonder whats going to happen to all these leaves waiting for the pick-up that will not come. It seems to me that our communication of the pick-up schedule could have been better conveyed. Or perhaps some people just have not made the effort to search out the information. What I am pretty sure of is that come the first snowfall big enough to bring the plows out, an ugly, leafy mess will be overturned spoiling the small comfort of clean white snow.

Perhaps all of this can be corrected next fall. May I suggest that we take a step back to the colonial days and get the word out by via a Town Crier. Let the Aldermen wear a three cornered hat while walking the streets shouting out the ordinance and rules of leaf handling. Maybe they can include where to buy bags and holders too.

Every comment that I've made in the past regarding snow removal in Waukesha has been positive and this one will be no different.  Way back when, I did a little alley plowing in Milwaukee and drove the big plows and blowers at Timmerman and Capital Airports. So, I know a little bit about what the city street plow drivers have to contend with. It has always been that the biggest complaints about plowing usually come from areas where cars are parked on the streets, making difficult to plow and leaves the street a mess, no fault of the plow drivers.

Yesterday I was in Kenosha for work and the residential roads were not good on the east side of town.  This was likely more due to lake effect snow than on-street parking, but I still saw places where plows had to maneuver around cars and the mess that remains after the car is removed from the pile.

We in Waukesha are fortunate not to have lake effect snow and we are fortunate that most streets are clear of parked cars. However, there are exceptions and I've wanted to write (complain) about this for some time now.  If you search my earlier blogs, I began a short series about some quality of life issues in the city. One that never went beyond the draft stage was about needless parking on the street.

Until I was transferred to another office, I came home on Moreland each day. Each day there was one or two cars parked on the street during rush hour and would cause a bottle neck for the two lanes of traffic. Depending on the mood of all the drivers, merging was seamless or traffic came close to having fender benders. I never saw any reason why that car could not have parked in the driveway, which was empty.  All I could think is that they parked there to make some kind of statement. I've never discussed this with the city but as more traffic comes this way while going home to the outlying developments, no parking signs will appear. Probably AFTER there is an accident with injuries. This is what happens when common sense and courtesy fail.

Back to the snow plowing and parked cars.  I frequently see a driveway full of cars and it is inevitable that some will be parked on the street to let someone else get out or be able to stage their position for later exits. I can sympathize.  I once had five vehicles in my driveway, but am fortunate that they can fit side by side.  Now that the boys are grown and gone, I wish I had a single lane drive every time it snows! I also had relation in Milwaukee with a big house, but no driveway or alley. It was either park in the street or have no cars.

Which brings me to an observation and a question on why it was done this way. That is, driveways are staggered such that they don't face each other. That makes it difficult backing out of one's driveway when a car is parked across the street. One of the few times that I parked a car in front of my house, my neighbor, that was three occupants ago, backed into my little Ford Escort. They weren't used to any car being there.

So I have made a couple points that I'll summarize. First is that the plow drivers have done a great job of clearing the streets. Second is that where there is less that clear streets, it is usually due to parked cars, either legally or illegally parked. Plow drivers can't do anything about that. Common sense and courtesy can, or an ordinance.