Street sweeping here is imminent as the city revs up for yet another crack at cleaning this neighborhood as the winter comes to an end.
One thing is decidedly different this year as opposed to last year.
There has largely been the absence of winter as we have come to know it in New England.
There were no cold waves, no great snow storms, just the near to complete absence of ice, and streets and sidewalks which are relatively clean as a result.
True, they need a sweep. The gutters need a sweep as well. Wherever trash collects because the wind has blown it there must also be cleaned out.
But the type of hassle the city usually experiences trying to sweep streets and to tidy up where trash accumulated and was later buried by snow and then frozen by ice and subsequently made filthy by plowing and salt and exhaust fumes, has not come to pass during this winter that never really happened.
This bodes well for a great spring which will lead into a much cleaner summer for the neighborhood.
We don’t, by the way, find many people lamenting the lack of winter, the relative absence of trash filled gutters and sidewalks and the proliferation of pot-holes that always follows heavy snow, plowing, salting and ice.
We dodged a bullet this year.
Frankly, it feels good.