Patio Furniture and City Services

Mr. Moohoo had a blog post today about one of the best city services of all time, the annual leaf pick-up in Roseville. Are there other suburbs that do that? I haven't really heard about it anywhere else... In any case, as I live in the big city to southwest, we still have to bag all of our leaves. However, there is at least one city service that we were very happy to discover. First, a story about patio furniture. Don't worry, it will all make sense in the end.

When we bought our lovely home 2.5 years ago, we inherited a well-used set of patio furniture from EMSA's parents. It was functional but perhaps not the best looking stuff on earth:

Note if you will the duct tape on the chairs and the sad state of the paint on the table.

So this summer, it was my own personal quest to find a replacement set at something approaching a reasonable price. For anyone who has looked into buying patio furniture, you'll know that the 2nd requirement is virtually impossible if you want something that isn't plastic. Plastic was just right out.

Finally, after despairing that nothing could be found, I remembered my friend Desi telling me about a place called Dock 86, where she had purchased a lot of furniture for her townhouse. The website made it seem too good to be true but one Saturday, my mom and I ventured out to Little Canada to check it out. Lo and behold, we were hugely successful!

So much better.

Classy, a great deal, and it totally fits the space. We were pretty ecstatic and put it to good use immediately:

Now, back to the beginning of this post... city services. It turns out that the big city does have at least one perk up it's sleeve. It turns out that, on recycling day (every other Friday), the city will take up to two large items at a time, provided they are at least 50% metal. Those chairs definitely, definitely qualify. We are now down to the table and just the lounger - all the chairs have been picked up by the city and taken away for no additional fee. That's not quite as good as leaf pick-up, but it's pretty close. Side note: they will also take mattresses.

Now, without further ado or transition, an extraordinarily goofy photo of Calvin: