Ah, beautiful! It's Friday afternoon after a long week, the temperature is a balmy 65, and the sun is beaming down. Bliss?
Sorry, Bamp! Wrong. No bliss. Five o'clock, and my jackass millionaire neighbor has his landscaping crew scouring every inch of his sucky property for the one leaf that the leaf blowers didn't find last fall.
Don't you just fucking hate leaf blowers? I can't think of a tool I despise more. Loud, stinking, and stupid is no way to present yourself to the planet. And yet I smell and hear this pestilential equipment going full bore, just as I sit down on the porch with my mocktail. I deserve better.
Granted, I do not have a very big yard. But I rake it from back to curb a couple of times a year, with a damn rake. All you hear with a rake is scrape scrape scrape, crackle crackle crackle. And you don't smell a thing. I'm 63 and I still rake my yard. My neighbors half my age crank up their leaf blowers dozens of times a year. Yet somehow, I don't have any more leaf litter in my yard than they do.
Many and many a Saturday morning has been marred by the gas-powered blowing menaces. Here I am, biffing out onto my front porch with a steaming cup and the morning paper, and OOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOwwwwOOOOOOOwwwoOOOOOO. The leaf blowers start moaning. Here I am, biffing back inside to the kitchen table.
I hear that California has banned gas-powered leaf blowers. A sound move. Did you know that a leaf blower emits more pollution than a car? Way more. A thousand times noisier too.
Mr. J actually joined the Haterfield Environmental Commission in an effort to get some local leaf blower ordinances going. Ha! He lasted six months. In that six months, the Commission talked endlessly about backyard hens and nary a breath about leaf blowers. "Bad for small businesses, any kind of ban," the town councilman sniffed.
Can you believe that bunch wanted me to write an essay about micro meadows for their "Gold Star Community" checklist? Suck it, Haterfield. I'm not writing squat for you.
So here I am, all ranty and pissy on a Friday afternoon, instead of basking in the glow of spring sunshine.
Is it any wonder I bought four acres of trees? All leaves welcome, all the time.
5 comments:
We have a municipal bylaw here that forbids use of leaf blowers before 7:00 a.m. (also, lawn mowers, snow blowers, etc, any kind of yard machinery). Well, at least it's something. People here use leaf blowers year round for things like blowing light accumulations of snow as well.
WITH YOU THERE. Haaaaaaaaaate them.
Myself I don't understand someone aversion to a leaf filled or cut grass fill yard. Those things will mulch down and are good for the grass and flowerbeds. All the gods know any level of politicians job is to do nothing - a lot of nothing.
We live in a Mini Farm community, an Oasis in a huge Urban area. None of The Farms use those damned things, just the Subdivision Hells where their Yards are the size of Postage Stamps and their Grass is Astroturf. Seems the most anal about a Leaf are those who despise Nature, Gardens, or have HOA's that are mini Gestapos. Perhaps you should play very loud annoying Music while the Leaf Blower Brigade is doing their thing... and if the offending Neighbor complains, say you'll stop when the Leaf Blowing at 5 am does. I know, I play dirty. Years ago we had some Youthful Neighbors that played very explicit lyric Music loudly, I bought some of the most ridiculous over-the-top Holy Roller Music to play at the same time... they ceased, I donated the crackpot Religious track back to the Goodwill, it was the best Ninety-Nine Cents ever spent and the Calm of the Hood was restored without incident.
Even WORSE!!!-----the insidious high-pitch "back-up beeps" emitted by so many commercial, utility, and construction vehicles.
The infernal "Chinese water torture" us urban dwellers have to endure and suffer chronically and consistently day after day, often non-stop for hours at a time.
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