The new tarps have skinned the rooftop next door to protect against the rare winter rains: a carnival of orange and white over concrete and corrugated tin, the plastic pinned flat with abandoned luggage, broken tv sets, upturned chairs, strips of splintering lumber.
I’m participating in the River of Stones project in January. Look for a new post each day. Click the badge at left for more details.
Samuel Snoek-Brown 
That sounds ghastly!!!
I suppose it is, though I’ve gotten used to looking at it. I actually posted pics of the roof next door for my second Photo blog entry: https://snoekbrown.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/photo-blog-2-3/, if you want to see what it looked like eight months ago. The fourth pic in the series is a pretty good wide shot of the roof: https://snoekbrown.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/img_00592.jpg This year the neighbors seem to have opted for clear plastic, like drop cloths, over the bright blue, but the orange is still a perennial favorite.
In case anyone’s curious, our building and the one opposite us (across the roof in that fourth pic) are rather upscale, at least on the surface, and I half suspect whoever owns the little one-story building between us is preparing to tear it down in the next year or two. But that kind of dichotomy–old and dilapidated next to new and modern–is sort of a hallmark of the kind of growth that’s been going on here for the last couple of decades.
BTW, Sam: I love people who use the word “ghastly”! 🙂