PARK SLOPE — Maybe the Christmas trees will be collected by Easter.
With spring just a few weeks away, Park Slope residents are wondering if discarded holiday trees littering their sidewalks will ever be picked up by city garbage collectors.
In some cases, it will take a major thaw for the tree trash to be removed, a Department of Sanitation spokeswoman said. The agency intends to pick up the trees, but not while they're still frozen to the sidewalk.
That means a brown and brittle 6-foot plus tree near the corner of Sixth Avenue and Garfield Place isn't going anywhere this week. It's been melded to the sidewalk by ice since shortly after Santa left town, a woman who lives in a nearby building said.
DNAinfo New York found at least two dozen other aging spruces and firs this week on blocks between Fifth and Eighth avenues and President and Second streets. The Noel-themed debris also included decorative garlands and a lonely looking wreath propped against a Carroll Street lamppost.
The Department of Sanitation spokeswoman said efforts to collect trash, recyclables and Christmas trees have been hampered this winter by "over 57 inches of snow since early January."
She noted that despite the snow onslaught the agency has managed to collect about 162,000 trees this year, compared with about 140,000 trees after previous Christmases.
Park Slope resident Matt Tatman was so puzzled by the staying power of the yuletide trash that he's taken to Twitter twice to ask the city's 311 system about it.
"[Can] you explain why Xmas trees are still all over Park slope now. It's March now," Tatman wrote on March 2.
Tatman said 311 responded and suggested he report the uncollected trees online, but the system asks for one specific address, and Tatman has seen the cast-off trees over an "eight-block swath" on walks with his dog. He's spotted the trees between Union and Third streets, from Sixth to Eighth avenues.
Earlier this winter his dog liked to stop and sniff each discarded tree but, as weeks have passed, the arboreal refuse has lost its appeal, he said.
"When [the trees] first came out he got really excited and stopped at every one," Tatman said of his pet.
"Dogs like to pee on them. But they're getting so gross that my dog ignores them now."
