Plants really shouldn't be growing in your downspouts!

[yrieithydd]

This morning I was being dopey and I think having my Saturday morning lie-in a few days late. Before I got up dad mentioned that he wanted me to help him clean out the gutters. I thus decided that there was no point having a shower before I got up and so got dressed in my tatty clothes and haivng eaten some breakfast -- feeling faint from lack of food at the top of a ladder not appealing to me -- we went and got the ladder out and I started climbing up and down. The first one wasn't too bad lots of leaves and it took `probbing'* with a stick to get it clear, but I heard the noise change as the water started going down the inside of the pipe. We then moved to the front of the house. Here, green leaves where showing over the top of the gutter by the downspout. I thought it looked like it was growing, dad thought something had just got stuck. After a bit of faff we got the ladder stable enough for me to climb up which I did with a rope tied to my belt-loop so we could lift a bucket up. I got up there and with some use of a trowel the stick and my hand managed to pull up the plant which was indeed growing; it looked like a pot-bound plant. I then suggested we looked at the gutter on the extension. This was not so bad at the downspout but it does not slope properly and so had a layer of of soil about an inch deep down its length which meant much going up and down and use of a hose to get it clear. I was pretty mucky by the we finished and definitely needed a shower! The water in the shower felt pretty warm as my hands had acclimatised to being stuck into freezing cold water.

*That's what I said at one point; we decided it was a mixture of probing and prodding.