Tongs for Gutters

[darkoshi]

Metal tongs are also good for cleaning out gutters!

(They allowed me to finish the task even after being horrified to find tons of ants running around in the gutters after I'd pulled out a few handfuls of leaves. They must have built a nest within the decaying leaves and gunk in there. But the tongs would work well on ant-free gutters too. )

The tongs are narrow enough to easily pull crud out of the gutters with them, and they avoid me getting my hands/gloves dirty while doing it.

Comments

Oh, and...

[marahmarie]

Have you ever had plants start growing in your gutter debris? We'd get scrub oak and other little seedlings coming up in ours all the time.

Re: Oh, and...

[darkoshi]

Not this time, but in the past, yep.

My neighbor even has a cactus growing on top of his shed (not in a gutter; just on the one side of its roof). I always thought that was rather odd and was sure he knew about it. But now I think he probably never even goes behind the shed where you'd need to be to see it. I've been meaning to mention it to him someday to see if he gets a laugh out of it.

Re: Oh, and...

[marahmarie]

That's...amazing (and would love to see that!). My back porch is so mossed over/soft from the deck boards needing a power washing to get all the moss and rain-induced slime off that wild seedlings grow between the boards now, as well. I just let them for the most part. Sweeping removes some of them; the rest never seem to make it no matter what.