Residents love and hate..., Hangzhou woman was scared to tears by this scene while cooking! The two buildings in the community are densely packed with
Yesterday morning, Orange User "Hongdou" posted on the "Complaint and Help" page of Orange-Persimmon Interactive: The ivy and trumpet creeper of Building 26 in Gudang Community have covered the walls, and the windows of several households are blocked. Can you please trim the branches that are blocking the view?
Wensan West Road runs from east to west. When you reach the intersection of Yile Road, you will see a red and white six-story residential building with walls on both sides wrapped in green plants. The windows seem to be embedded in the green wall, and red trumpet creepers are blooming on the high walls.
Ms. Wang is a merchant on the first floor of Building 26, running an electric vehicle store. Ms. Wang said that she was almost scared to death on the Dragon Boat Festival and cried for the whole morning.
On June 10, Ms. Wang was preparing food in the kitchen when she inadvertently saw a large snake crawling through a hole in the wall outside the kitchen. Her husband was resting on a recliner in the front hall. She was so scared that she screamed and shouted to her husband, "There's a snake, there's a snake."
Ms. Wang’s husband, Mr. Sun, said that he heard his wife shouting and rushed to the kitchen, where he saw the tail of the snake. The snake’s body was dark green and he couldn’t tell what species it was, but it was neither the rat snake seen in rural areas nor the bamboo pit viper.
Yesterday, Ms. Wang was still very emotional when she talked about the snake. She used her hands to measure the thickness of the snake, saying that it was as thick as her arm and at least 2 meters long. To get rid of the bad luck, she cut her hair short. "This hole in the kitchen is where my cat goes in and out to rest. We have had cats for seven or eight years... This green wall is not good. It is too dense and easy to breed snakes and insects."
The east and north walls of Building 25, south of Building 26, were also covered with ivy, but a large area of it has died. Unit 1 of Building 25 has two households per floor, a total of 12 households, most of whom are elderly residents who live there themselves.
Brother Xu and Sister Liu, a couple in Unit 1, Building 25, have lived on the east side of the top floor for 30 years. Brother Xu said: "No one cares about this thing, it just grows on its own. The first advantage is that it looks good, and secondly, it can provide shade and keep you cool in the summer. But there are also many troubles, such as mosquitoes, which are very tenacious and will grow through the cracks in the windows, and dead branches and leaves will also float into the house."
Sister Liu took the reporter to see her bathroom. "The outside of the bathroom is covered with thick vines, which are not easy to deal with. The ones that are close can be cut with scissors, and the ones that are far away can only be poked with a long pole. I dare not open the window because it is full of small flying insects."
"The dead branches and leaves also clog the rooftop gutters and drain pipes, making it easy for the roof to leak on rainy days. One year, the property management cleaned up two sacks of dead leaves from the rooftop. The balcony was leaking and moldy, so I had to paint it white myself..."
Brother Liu said that the roots of the 25 ivy trees must have been damaged.
82-year-old Grandma Meng has lived in Unit 1, Building 25 since 1985, for 39 years, and is one of the first residents of the community.
When talking about creepers, the first thing Grandma Meng said was, "We don't want them! There are too many mosquitoes and insects that run into our house. Some people have even seen snakes. Many neighbors don't like them." "We asked the property management to remove them last month. They removed them when they were digging the ground to install the gas pipeline."
Secretary Zhu of Gubei Community told reporters that she contacted the property manager and supervisor of the community. The property manager was not aware of the situation. The supervisor said that the property only accepted the pruning of the part of the green wall that affected the residents, and did not touch the roots of the 25 buildings of ivy.
Secretary Zhu said that last summer, the community conducted a survey on the green walls of buildings 25 and 26, and 70 to 80 percent of the residents liked them. The community was not aware of the large-scale death of the green walls of building 25, and the large number of dead branches and leaves would be sent to the site for inspection, and then a survey would be conducted on the residents. If the residents liked it, the planting would be resumed. If not, the community would report to the street and apply for professional solutions and funds. Because greening and walls have long coexisted, dealing with dead branches and leaves requires ensuring the safety of the wall and preventing leakage, which requires a professional treatment plan.
Is there any way to preserve beauty while ensuring safety?
On November 6 last year, the Express Orange-Persimmon Express reported on the ivy planted on Building 26 of Gudang New Village. Some young people found such old houses very interesting and went there to take photos and check in. At that time, some residents told reporters that the green plants on the walls were indeed cool in the summer, but they attracted mosquitoes, snakes and geckos.
Parthenocissus tricuspidata is a deciduous vine with tendrils that can cling to rocks or walls. It is not an exaggeration to say that Parthenocissus tricuspidata attracts snakes.
More than 10 years ago, several walls along Shuguang Road in Zhejiang University Qiushi Community became popular because of ivy, and were praised by netizens as "the most beautiful walls in Hangzhou". However, residents said that although it looks good from the outside, living inside means being tortured by mosquitoes, geckos, and snakes that crawl up.
In 2016, Mr. Wu, who lives in Zhijixiang Lane, Xiaoying Street, Shangcheng District, said that a snake swam across the north window sill, scaring him and his wife to run out of the house. They didn't dare to return to the room until the urban management team came to the door. Later, the urban management team caught the snake, which was a 1.5-meter-long rat snake with golden scales shining with black light. Amphibian and reptile ecology and protection experts believe that the snake may have "walked" up the stairs or along the creeper.
But the cooling effect of ivy is real. Some people have done experiments and found that during the hottest time of summer, the indoor temperature of residential buildings covered with ivy is three or four degrees Celsius lower than that of other ordinary residential buildings.
The old residential buildings covered with ivy give people a sense of mystery and art. But for the residents living in them, sometimes it is really a love-hate relationship. Is there a way to have both beauty and safety?
