Rake! Rake! against the dying of the light. With apologies to Dylan Thomas (and I think I turned his poetry into doggerel earlier on this blog, too!). Dugnad, pronounced approximately like "Doognod" except the "gn" sound is softer. A dugnad is a voluntary communal service event, and our homeowners association had one tonight. After the long winter, the association areas in our neighborhood were a little ragged. Leaves needed to be raked, trees pruned, sand put down on the walkways during the winter needed to be swept up. A lot of the sand had been swept by a street-sweeper, but some sand remained, especially into the planted areas. The tot-lots needed some work. And so on.
As a prelude to the dugnad, Tove and I started cleaning up our backyard last weekend. We had great weather. Sunny and bright. We raked the garden and washed the deck, washed the patio furniture and set it out on the deck. Yesterday, because a big dumpster has been placed near us in anticipation of the dugnad, we pruned the hedge trees and tore out some juniper/pine bushes in the front of the house.
Tonight after raking and filling several wheelbarrows with leaves and sand, we joined the others at one of the tot lots for coffee and cake. It was nice to see everyone working together to beautify our neighborhood. At first, I was perplexed why the homeowners association would not just hire a landscape maintenance company to do the work. But I think that having all of us do the work was good for instilling pride of ownership and to encourage everyone to keep the neighborhood nice.
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| April 5, 2011 |
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| The back yard (viewed from the living room). Taken March 26, 2011. |
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| Taken February 13, 2011 |
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| The back yard as seen from the parking structure (taken May 3, 2011) |
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