Leaf Blowers Blow

I'm not going to polarize this country even more than it already is-- but I HATE the sound of gas-powered leaf-blowers and I think folks should rake their leaves the old-fashioned way (or at least hire someone-- legal citizen or not-- to rake their leaves the old-fashioned way) but I'm not going to exacerbate matters further and declare that there are only two kinds of leaf rakers-- I'm not looking to be controversial and there is obviously a continuum of styles of leaf-raking and it's not an entrenched two-party leaf-raking system where you can really only reasonably choose between two styles-- but at the two poles of leaf raking are the obsessive raker who starts raking and bagging and doesn't stop until ALL of the leaves are removed from the lawn/yard and while I admire this style of raking, it is not my style-- then there is the irregular and sporadic raker, which is how I do it, the guy who randomly rakes a few leaves and puts them in a bag but doesn't necessarily fill the bag and maybe just leaves the bag in the yard, half full. . . because there's always tomorrow and there will always be more leaves and it's really organizationally difficult to rake ALL the leaves and honestly, if you leave some leaves on your lawn and the wind blows the right direction, they might end up on an obsessive leaf-raker's lawn, and that sort of solves the problem . . . plus fall is all about decay anyway and won't some of these leaves that you do not rake and bag decay and add nutrients to the soil?

2 comments:

zman said...

I agree with almost all of this. I wait for all the leaves to fall before I collect them, and I rake the leaves from the perimeter of the house and deck, and once they're in a pile I rake them onto a sheet so I can drag them from the back to the curb where the town collects them. But I am in the middle of your false dichotomy--I use an electric leafblower which is much quieter, healthier, and environmentally friendlier than a gas leafblower to amass the leaves into a pile between my raking processes.

Professor G. Truck said...

i do own an electric leafblower (which i use sparingly, to blow the leaves off my stolen moss)

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