Bamboo Rain

There are some nice things about living on a small private street somewhat off the beaten track but still in the middle of a big city, with only one way in and a wall blocking the other end of the street. Mostly its due to the fact that there is never any traffic on the road (well short of some of the trafficking 3 doors down), which means that, come a nice Sunday afternoon in January - temperature 70F and climbing - you get to sit out on the front of the yard and recover from an otherwise dreary start to the new year. At this time of year the back of the house is still off limits as the sun still isn't getting high enough to hit the majority of the yard and the air gets trapped, so it sits about 10 degrees colder. How on earth the lime tree expects to grown fruit I have no idea but it tries.

So, the back of the house is out, but the front, out near the road, is a good place to perch and grab a sly Sunday afternoon beer.

Mind you its not that sly when the entire neighbourhood is out. All the kids on their bikes and roller skates. The guy 2 doors down moving out in order to rent. The next door neighbour practicing his golf swing in the garage (with his new "artificial golf tee" - no doubt a Christmas present). A bit of a Park Life really. But all calm and happy and peaceful in the world.

Earlier on I touched on the wall at the end of the street. It deserves a little more of a mention at this point as its about to become the focal point of the story. Its pink. Big and pink. And "guards" the street from the house around the corner, shielding us with a big grove of bamboo - on their side of the wall. Quite a tall clump really - maybe 25-30 feet tall.

Which is what made the next few minutes somewhat surprising. Suddenly it started raining bamboo. Slowly at first. Just a few leaves and twigs. One by one they started flying over the wall, twisting and swirling down to earth. But then it started gathering pace. First one big branch, then another, some more leaves and then big clump of bamboo. Overall around 50 of the tall stems came flying over the wall and into the middle of the road. It was quite incredible to watch and even now you see it in the mind's eye in slow motion. A pile of bamboo forming on the road, on our side of the wall not theirs.


Eventually there was about a 5 foot pile of bamboo remnants just sitting there.

What to do? The ideal answer would probably have been to gone over there and just tip it all back. But quite frankly we were all somewhat happy as it is quite an eyesore. So a few loud comments amongst all assembled (how passive aggressive!) and the rain started to stop. Thinking back - dumping it all back over the wall would have been the better course of action. However on of the neighbors on our street broke down and cleared it up. It probably had something to do with wanting to be able to drive out later in the day.


So chalk that up to another idiot who doesn't understand that we all have to live together and dumping your trash somewhere else doesn't make it magically go away.


Still, it did provide a talking point for everyone while we finished the beers.