Gutter Nonsense

Any time you start flattering yourself that you have your house in good working order, take a look at the gutters. If you live among trees, chances are, the gutter guards are plastered with seeds and catkins,

and the bits and pieces that have somehow managed to sneak through have blocked the hole leading to the downspout, turning the gutter into a mosquito hatchery. (There are little cages you can push into the hole to supposedly keep it from getting blocked, but the cages are even more likely to get plugged with debris than the hole itself.) 

When the hole gets blocked, water pours in a lovely curtain off the side of the gutter. The constant weight of standing water puts a strain on the nails holding up the gutters, and eventually the nails will pull out and the whole thing collapse. That happened to the rental next door, which made me feel like a good caretaker by comparison until I happened to be walking around a certain house closer to home during yesterday's rain.

If everything goes right, it will only take a few minutes to clear the downspout hole and replace a few of the nails with much more sturdy screws, proving yet again that houses, and civilization for that matter, hold together only through timely intervention.

While I'm at it, there seems to be a part missing from yet another dysfunctional gutter. Who, I'd like to know, told Entropy it could move in?