Sigh
The city of Portland decided earlier this year (and without a public comment period?; at least I never heard about it until about a week ago) that it would start charging people US$15/pass for leaf removal (two passes worth.)
Now if you’ve got a couple of mature sweetgums sitting in front of your house, they will dump enough leaves onto the street to make that US$15 actually a competitive price (and, as an aside, give passing bicyclists a really good reason to ride down the middle of the traffic lane.) But if someone parks their SUV in front of your house the night before, well, the amount of leaves left over become somewhat less than a killer deal.
So I had to go out this morning and sweep up the leaves that didn’t have a big ugly old truck sitting on top of them.
I’ll make a compost pile for them later today, I guess; if they spend a few months composting they’ll make good fill for when I remove the next couple of slabs of driveway.