The Purple Stains

The Purple Stains are what I call the flowers that drop every spring from our neighbor's catalpa tree. The take about a month to completely come down and of course most of them land on our back porch, the paved area of our backyard and the walkway next to our house.

When we first moved into our house we did not realize the extent of this flower problem. At first the flowers in the tree are white and very beautiful but then they start to fall to the ground. Almost immediately they turn a dried up purple color and they are everywhere where we walk. The problem is they stick to our shoes and then are tracked into the house where they stain everything they touch with a purple smear. That first Spring in the house the kids tracked in an awful lot of the dead flowers on their shoes and we had purple stains all over our rugs. 

I became obsessed with sweeping up the flowers at that time and now some twenty five years later I'm still out there several times a day sweeping those purple stains. Fortunately I sweep them off to the side into flower beds and don't have to pick them up and put them in the trash. I just let nature take care of them once I get them out of the places where we walk. The photo of the walkway was taken a couple of hours after I had already swept that area. If I didn't sweep for a day or so you probably would not be able to see the concrete. 

During the years when I was working I would come out in the evening and sweep up the dried up flowers but for the past few years that I've been retired I go out there several times a day and sweep. It gives me a little exercise. It's amazing how many flowers can drop on our porch and walkway in a day. 

Of course there are also the constant dropping of the long and hard cigar like seed pods that are also a big messy pain in the ass. They seem to come down almost all year long. So today and every day this week and probably next week as I did last week I will sweep a couple of times a day.

I wanted to paint the back porch this week but because of the purple stain flowers I will need to wait until at least next week because I don't want those things coming down on my wet paint.

BTW, The Purple Stains sounds like a good name for a rock band back in the day.