Mayhem on Montrose - The Ditch Witch

I think that it is a bad sign to come home from work and find an abandoned trailer loaded with a roll of yellow pipe sitting in front of your house. It makes you wonder what the city is up to now.

Our short time on Montrose has been rife with construction. The day that we moved was the day that they decided to tear up all the pavement and dig around in the sewers or water main. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing, but I did have to pay my movers for an extra hour while they sat at the end of the street watching the construction, since the could not get their truck past the work. The de-pinking of the door and pillars was delayed while waiting for the street to be repaved. Then the day before I left on my canoe trip, they dug an 7' deep hole in my garden, destroying all the back breaking work I'd done cultivating and planting. So you can imagine my worry when I see spray painted lines all over the sidewalks, and now this!

I was shuffling off to work this morning in a near blizzard, listening to the roar of machines in the near distance. There were 8 big trucks parked at the south end, all of them up to different destructive behaviour. One machine was drilling holes in every body's yard and then the guys covered it with a plywood square. Then a backhoe passed by. All this to replace the gas lines, I guess. Right now they are working on the east side of the street, so my tulip bulbs and lilac bush are safe for a few more days, but will they survive this next attack?

I got to the end of the street to see the biggest and meanest looking machine in their crew: the Ditch Witch. I wanted to take a photo, but I was intimidated by the half dozen men standing around it. So I went online and found this image which is even better. What does a construction crew need more than a shapely woman perched on a shovel, flying past an orange moon? Maybe the fellas were staring at me wondering where my shovel/broom was, not because I had a camera. But better than the name and sexy logo is the fact that they offer a platinum card for their customers with 3 months at no interest. I mean, how many people actually buy this equipment?

I am scared of the Ditch Witch and what it might do to my garden. Lord only knows what they are up to right now. All that yellow pipe may be in the ground already. Only time will tell. Let's just hope that their isn't a gas explosion like there was last week up at St. Clair and Mount Pleasant, where a house was destroyed and a woman lost her life. Compared to that, losing a few plants is not really that big of a deal.