don't ya just love it? so many reviews of bad ones out there and you got a goodie! yeah for you! and him.

he's doing his part - and maybe by doing his part at his place he then saves the trip to the dump if someone comes and picks up from the bins he sorts into... good all around that way.

can we clone him? is he vacationing in AZ soon? lol!

get some of his bz cards to carry with you. I do that with some favorite bznesses. promote the good ones!

How did you find this gem of a contractor????

Just the fact that he himself came to clean up is amazing.

I've read a couple comments regarding going to Restore for building items. We are more than appreciative to the contractors that use us for recycling and of course individuals too. Few realize we will actually diassemble some kitchens and baths to resell at the stores. Or pick up your large items. We even have some contractors who volunteer on a regular basis.

This is a positive post. So glad to hear you have one of the really good guys. That is a lot of work he adds to his job in recycling.

Emagineer, you are so right about using Restore. For a while after Katrina, they had a store up the road from us. Now, it is gone from here and across town. I wish it was here still.

I will be in touch with DeMouy off and on in the near future and will make it a point to ask about his use of Restore. From what he said, he lets his subcontractors or hired help take the salvageable items to sell. The way he says it, some of the people rent houses from "slum lords" and so they can get a reduction in rent if they provide fixtures or appliances and do the work installing them.

This Tuesday is a trash collection day in Mobile. For our neighborhood. We have this every other Tuesday, and can put out 9 cubic yards of trash. All leaves must be BAGGED, but I NEVER put out leaves....they are green gold and I shred them and use them as garden mulch.

I mention the trash day, because they have "pickers" driving by real slow scanning for good stuff in the trash piles. If there is anything in my pile which is salvageable, I try to leave it to the side so the stack won't get messed up. The big tongs on the truck can pick up a VW sized pile in one scoop if it is properly arranged.

I know that putting something out in the trash is easier for me to do than trying to sell it or even donate it. It is NOT going to the landfill, for sure. Too many pickers go through the stuff before the truck arrives.

My friend now doing my yardwork is lecturing me on better recycling practices, so I can foresee better attention to that is in our future. Keeping down vermin and critters is my main concerns with that. I wish the collection services would include our section of town in their coverage area.

Hi, moccasin, your Demouy is my kinda' contractor. We just had our house re-roofed last week, and I never even thought to ask about recycling--don't know what can be done with old asphalt shingles and roofing paper.

I did go around with the long-handled magnet, and picked up all the stray nails, not just for recycling, but also for the sake of safety. I asked if the roofers wanted them, but they declined, so I put them in the 'metal box' for the trash man. I gave him the few soda cans that we had, too.

We don't have pickers, but I've been known to run out with a bag of soda cans, if I see someone combing through the roadside ditches.

Our nemisis right now is bears. I live in the city, but Steph, totally understand the critter problem with trash. We are getting bears everywhere...underground parking at the bank, mom and 2 cubs visiting someones kitchen. They obviously like the food better down here than in the mountains. It has really gotten worse the last couple of years and there are plenty of other trash visitors too. It is humans that are causing this.

I try to empty my litter box into any bags put in the trash. But those bears can tear up anything and it is strewn all over. Thankfully they move on to better trash.

Emagineer, they say that New Hampshire is having a problem with bears too. Their food supply up in those mountains was not adequate, and I guess the dry weather did not help. So the bears are coming out of the higher elevation. It is a sad thing, when nature makes a correction and the population of wild life suffers. Especially when people are in the middle of things.

I would not think you could do much about keeping the bears out of anything they wanted. In DH's town about 25 miles outside Boston, there is an increased population of coyotes, bold enough to walk down the middle of the street in broad daylight. Of course, deer are all over, and this summer were eating even green apples. I told DH to be sure to keep bird baths filled with water, because they were looking for moisture.

He said a flock of really tiny birds were on the lawn this morning, stayed about 2 hours, and then left en masse. The winter migrations are beginning.

In Mobile, I think everyone is having hummingbirds visit the last red flowers. They are everywhere. And butterflies too. I'm expecting to see the Gulf Fritillary caterpillars start eating my passionvines very soon. My milkweeds are doing okay, and I hope I have some caterpillars for the swallowtails living on them. It is still up in the 90s and my yard work happens in short bouts, the humidity is so high I am drenched in 30 minutes or so. But I'm cleaning up the yard so I will remember it looking nice when I leave it.

Here too for all the larger wild animals you mentioned. The deer even sleep in our yards at night and broad daylight, take their trips down the streets and peruse the new plant growth. I actually enjoy seeing them, but am afraid of racoons, coyotes and whatever else is showing up.

Last year something built a den inside my stack of firewood. This took some major strength. I filled it back up and added some moth balls....which I think is illegal for wild life.

I'm not sure if they are short on food in the mountains, am thinking the food is easier to get to and far more of it in population. They aren't afraid of anything, even my barking dog. And one day I took a broom to shoo them away from my tree bark, which was supposed to be deer proof. They just stood there looking at me like I was an idiot.

There is a forum on the garden side of GWeb that discusses deer resistant plants. I visited it a couple of times to see what they were talking about, not because we have any deer problem in Alabama. But up in Mass., the deer come to DH's yard every night. He does not pay as much attention to them, or resent them, as much as he does the groundhogs. Now those make him foam at the mouth!!!

He has apple and peach and pear trees, just a few, and some years he never gets a single pear. The peaches he does better with, but has to pick his apples quickly. Deer prints are in the lawn. They sort of graze the tops of my flowers, and they LOOK sawed off. Rabbits take their meals further down in the plant, not the tops.

Anyway, the forum discussing what deer will eat, says that it is different in different areas. In some places, they will eat your hostas, in others they don't. Same way for squirrels. They learn to eat according to what is available I suppose.

I was cleaning up my garden yesterday, collecting the flower pots and dumping dirt from them. One small pot had a brand new HUGE pecan in it, still green and covered with its pithy outer coating. I know my favorite tailless squirrel, BOB, put this special treat in a special spot so he would find it on a cold and wet day this winter. I hated to bust his bubble, but this was the biggest pecan I've ever seen. In our "back forty" piece of land, we have three young pecans, and this nut had to come from the Mississippi Giant that is having its first nut crop. I'm finding pecans all over the place back there.