Getting Your Mind Out Of the Gutters

It's that time of year, again. Summer has sounded the retreat. And as usual, it slunk out of town like a coward. In its wake, the sky is full of falling leaves. And those of us who stayed behind await the battle. We are the last line of defense. And gutters are the enemy.

I don't want this to sound like a panicky call to arms, but gutters are destroying my peace of mind. It'd be different if the gutters were mine. I do own them, but that's only because they came with the house. I didn't pick them out.

If I had of picked them out, they would have been a whole lot more user friendly. Something along the lines of being self-cleaning would have been acceptable. But short of that, I would have settled for something less than the diabolical instruments of death and destruction I have to deal with now.

The theory is simple enough. You put gutters on your house to keep the water from running down the back of your neck when you try to unlock the back door in a monsoon.

That works okay most of the time. But they don't call the season Fall for nothing. It's a signal for all the leaves within ten square miles of your house to "fall" into your gutters and clog them up. At our house, we don't have gutters, we have Leaf Motels. The only thing my gutters don't offer is a heated swimming pool and spa.

In great masses, the leaves come. They bring their family, their pets, their lawn chairs, and their grills, and before you know it, they're complaining about not having cable. All the while, my gutters are gaping open wide like the official welcoming committee for the Great Southern Leaf Migration.
By then, I'm way beyond any sales pitches about gutter screens, gutter guards, or gutter helmets. I want a line of defense that leaves can't penetrate. I want gutter bunkers on the sides of my house. And if I can't have bunkers, I at least want a little fair warning.

When the Sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky, hit me in the head with a rake and say, "You're gutters are packed full of leaves, and when it rains the water will spill over the gutter and down the back of your neck as you try to unlock your door."

But it never happens that way. It never dawns on me
that trouble is brewing in my gutters until the waterfall appears over the doorway.

That's when I go out in a cold driving rainstorm with a ladder and try to beat the gutters at their own game. It's always a dumb thing to do. And it never does much good because the stupid ladder is always too short to reach the one spot where ninety per cent of the leaves are jammed up.

In case you didn't know, ladders are the enemy, too.