gardening

Leaf blowers. One of the noisiest things in the neighborhood. They are ubiquitous, never a day goes by without hearing them, before you actually see them. Blowing leaves all over the place.

We have a maintenance man here at the condo and he loves his leaf blower. It’s almost attached to his hand. I didn’t get the idea for this cartoon from him, but I could have.

The interesting thing is that when he is moving leaves around because that seems to be the thing, he is on top of us when doing it. You know, he is never off in a corner somewhere, he is right there, near us.

I know, first world problem.

One time, three of us were discussing something about the building and there was our guy, literally two feet away blowing the leaves. We could not hear ourselves talk.

The maintenance guy at the building next door, takes his leaf blower on a neighborhood tour. He is all over the place – up the block, down the block, I’ve never been able to figure out why. I’m tempted to ask him, but I don’t want to look as if I am attacking him.

But he has that loud thing running for hours on end. Non-stop. He goes around their building, then up and down the street, not sure where he is blowing the leaves, but you can be sure he is not picking them up.

I see gardeners blowing the leaves all over the place all the time. They blow the leaves from one area to the other. They don’t think I have ever seen them pick up the leaves – they usually blow them into the street, or into the next yard, like my cartoon here. The literally move from the yard they are working on, into the street, or somewhere other than that yard.

We’ve had these discussions in town about outlawing them, and the outcry is, “Then how are we going to pick up (I say move around) the leaves?”

I always remind them that when we were kids we used a rake and bag and not even a bag – we dumped them right into the garbage pail. We physically raked them up and dumped them into the garbage.

A novel concept whose time has come back. Or maybe electric leaf blowers are the answer, they are quiet, they are tethered to the wall with a plug and you can’t wander the neighborhood with them.

Till next time . . .