My fellow dog walker on Back Narrows Road, Peggy Kotin, wrote a letter to the editor this week which inspired me to get out there and do what I have been putting off for months. I spent about an hour on Sunday morning, in honor of Earth Day (April 22), cleaning up the roadside on my 200-yard dog walking route.

Without the dog in tow (she wouldn't have helped at all), I filled a 13-gallon garbage bag with returnable cans and bottles and half filled a 30-gallon trash bag with trash. Most of that was on just one side of the road in the 200-yard stretch, as someone had already cleaned the other side of the road. I know that some of the trash perhaps blew out of the back of a pickup but not the bottles and cans and not some of the trash (I found a half-filled plastic bottle of liquid fertilizer!?). Let's heed Peggy's advice to not litter and try to keep our roadsides nice to look at. I plan on keeping up with the roadside clean-up duty to keep my dog-walking route more pleasant.

We need the rain and our April showers have provided some help since winter didn't provide very much snow. According to the National Weather Service in Gray, a total of 10.39 inches of precipitation fell during the winter months Dec. 1 to Feb. 28 in Portland, which was .26 inches below normal. Also, 40 inches of snow fell during that period which was 5.5 inches below normal. I don't mind the rain, but I wish the temperatures would rise a little (more 60 degree days) and the wind wouldn't blow so hard and so frequently. I want to shed my winter coat and get some color on my face.