Annual tirade blog on leaf blowers

   This morning was started once again by the Columbia Association leaf blowers in the Tot Lot behind our house.  The need to remove leaves once a week from Tot Lots is probably minor noise pollution that we have to endure but is a reality of Fall that for the next month the whining of leaf blowers will need to be endured.   The drudgery of raking leaves has given way to the easier-on-the-body leaf blower.  Our need to bag up leaves rather than turn them into natural fertilizer is just another example of how obsessed we are with having a healthy grass lawn.  Lawns in our modern suburbs have turned nature's natural fertilizer into an enemy to be fought with every Fall.  Instead, nitrogen fertilizer is spread on our lawns to runoff into our streams and lakes to create oxygen-starved bodies of water that kill off fish.