Search This Blog

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Ban the leafblowers!!

      As I sit here blogging I have been listening to the whine of my neighbor's leaf blower for the past 2 hours. The whine of the leaf blower is like that of a jet engine warming up before take off.  His lawn is not that big but he keeps blowing the same leaves around in an ineffectual attempt to get them into piles.  
     Modern inventions like digital technology and appliances have made our lives more productive and allow us to amazing things which advance our culture.  And then there are inventions like leaf blowers that show how lazy and environmental destructive we can become.  Instead of mulching leaves into fertilizer for our lawns and gardens we put them into plastic bags to be taken to a landfill to stay underground for who knows how long.
   We have traded the memories of Fall as being a time of raking leaves, pumpkin carving, trick or treating and apple cider for the whine of the leaf blower.  Enjoy those other things until someone invents something to make them annoying too.

P.S.
The photo above is not of my neighbor.

3 comments:

Annie Rie said...

If you put your bags of leaves out on recycling day, they will be turned into compost. Particularlt if you use the paper bags the county has available.

For those of us in West County, we are on our own. No yard waste pickup.

We do Rake and Take, and have a small compost pile. A Master Gardener who lives two miles down from us brings her truck here every week. We have leaves in bags, grasses clippings in bags, and pine needles in bags.

She turns it into the proper mix to make compost.

We turn over 200 bags of mulched leaves into compost on our property and hers, every fall. And, yep, we use a leaf blower to clear out the planting beds, and then run a leaf vacuum that mulches them, along with small branches.

There are lots of ways around here for people to use their yard waste or get it to someone who will use it. Your neighbor should be doing that.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your post. These people are insane. I watch my neighbors doing the same thing even around their kids. Nothing has ever made me want to kill someone as those who use these infernal contraptions.

Azoay Boni said...
This comment has been removed by the author.