Thank gawwwd leaf blowers are prohibited in our
neighborhood.
ossobuco wrote:
I also don't quite get the blowing them around business... why not vacuum and compost.. though I guess I know the answer, a vacuum that would do that would be too strong for plants you want to stay in place.
There is such a vacuum thing - it sucks up the leaves and mulches them at the same time. It does run on gasoline and makes a noise, but you get a nice bag of chopped leaves for the annoyance. It looks like a bagpipe without the mouthpiece. If I find a picture I will post it. I think we got ours at Sears.
This image is from Amazon:
I might have added it on a2k before, I'll have to search, but probably not. I have a photo from our house in Venice to the school yard across the street featuring a mammoth machine and a guy walking along behind it, chasing two or three leaves.... egad what a racket. Both I and my husband worked at home at some points in our careers, he as a writer and I as a designer; both of these involve concentrated thinking. Nothing like an Extremely Elephantine Leaf Eating Machine to ruin a story line or an irrigation plan.
I took a photo of this Behemoth and Leaf and brought it to the school principal, ha, a new role for me in the principal's office (and did I spell principal correctly?). Never saw That machine again...
Why, Tico? Why?
Try to explain it to me.
Now that's my kind of neighborhood, CJane!
That's a great story, osso.
I was hoping you'd show up Green Witch! Do you use leaf blowers too or just the composting thing?
I might consider one of those gadgets but I've found that even if I don't chew my leaves up they compost in pretty well.
Greenwitch, now that I can go for, especially if it gets modified over time to make less noise. I may be extrasensitive. In Venice the houses are eight feet apart in many of the neighborhoods, and Venice is home to a lot of writers, for vast profit or none at all or somewhere in between.
Leaf blower is a misnomer....I don't have any leaves (living in Florida) and yet I have a "leaf" blower. I use it to blow sand and grass off the sidewalk and driveway after edging. Takes about 5 minutes, and I couldn't do as good a job in a half hour with a broom (or forever with a rake), especially on the sand. I don't ever use it before 10 am, and everyone on my street either has one or employs a lawn service that has one.
My idea of a useless power tool is a snow blower. Never had one of those up north (or a leaf blower either, come to think of it). Always did a quicker and better job with a shovel, and enjoyed the exercise.
Nice for you. Any one sleeping next door for a mid afternoon nap? (not mentioning actually thinking for a job...)
As far as I know, they all have real jobs.
AND they all have leaf blowers (or employ those who do), so its difficult to imagine someone taking offense.
Yes, we are a neighborhood of soulless barbarians.
As is everyone who lives in Florida.
(Just kidding!)
Brooms are nice and good ones seem to me as efficient if not more so than leaf blowers, for sand.
Screenwriting and landscape architecture aren't real jobs? Not in my town they aren't.
Throw in 90 degree days and high humidity and I'll give you a 25 minute headstart with that broom, Osso. I'll probably finish first AND still have the energy to drive you to the hospital emergency room.
By the way, have you used a leaf blower? I would hate to think your argument is based on speculation.
I have never used a leaf blower but I did spend my youth doing yard work under the Texas sun.
Everybody in my neighborhood uses them but me and physically fit older man across the street.
Maybe I ought to borrow one to experiment with......
Gawd, no, I hate mechanical noise in my already noise infested city plot or plots. In Venice I lived on a 39 foot by 105 foot lot with a McDonald's at the end of the relatively short street, a Catholic church and playground a block away, a public elementary school directly across the street, which was a cut through street for drug getaways, and also for the rest of us.
Now I live facing one of the streets in my new town where the parades happen - Trucker's and Rhododendron parades, but more commonly rivers of traffic at certain hours. Mild compared to living two blocks from a major state highway to the airport, Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. Or the route to the famed Venice Beach in the summer, Venice Blvd.
Perhaps you live in Quietville and the leaf blower is your rare excitement. For me that and the amplified guitar from the teen next door were near reason for homicide.
Remember, in my old neighborhood in Venice, a leafblower could be four feet from the window where I or hub was working, and yes, working for reasonable pay. Not that pay defines value, but perhaps it does to you.
There is a neighborhood near my house that has about 25 homes, all of them in the 3 - 5 million dollar range. Several weeks ago the one homeowner had a crew of about 12 guys, all armed with leaf blowers, clearing his property. Afterward there was not a leaf to be seen. I'm sure it was quite an expensive operation, paying that large of a crew, and that why it was all the more satisfying to me when, several days afterward we received ungodly winds and the direction of the wind was such that every single leaf in a neighboring woods was blown into the aforementioned guy's yard. Back to square one.
Not living in Florida ever, though I have lived in Chicago and New York but not gardened extensively in them - I have gardened in LA in the nineties, and have mapped properties with transit et al at over 100.
Not sure of the relevance. If I was trying to level a transit at 103 degrees and someone started up a leaf blower ten feet away I'd have to kill him.
I admit transits are laser endowed now. But not mine.
Property values are up at the swamp!
There goes the neighborhood.
Actually, my swamp was recently appraised at fifteen million dollars.
But I'm not selling.
