Happily for almost everyone, the garbage strike ended just over a week ago. The city workers were legislated back to work, and haven't settled yet, but at least garbage isn't mountaining up any more. It could well have been a PR fiasco to have quite so many people (350,000 I think was one estimate I read) descending on the city with garbage piles rotting everywhere.
Speaking of things which happened while I was away, we're down from 6 pepper plants to 1. No, they didn't die, they vanished. There is only one remnant of another plant. The others have been entirely uprooted and either eaten or at least vanished from the deck. I'm suspecting a racoon and hope the final pepper plant survivies. Meanwhile, this leaves me with 4 and a half empty pots to replant at this point in the season. I'm wondering where to source them from.