Stupid inventions of our time: the leaf blower

Sorry if you have one, but I must share my feelings of incredulity over this particular piece of equipment.

Pros and cons of The Rake.                              

Pros:
cheap
Will rot down in time when eventually discarded
Silent, apart from a satisfying small scratching sound
Good exercise, unless you suffer from tennis elbow (leaf-raker's elbow)
Non-polluting
Psychologically-non damaging: the operator can listen to birdsong, chat with someone who
might have been beguiled into leaf-help; think about life, leaves, trees, food, whatever, lulled by the peaceful and useful motion of raking an sweeping

Cons: Standing on rake and it flipping up into one's face as in Tom and Jerry cartoon

Pros and cons of the Leaf-Blower
(Writer rubs hands, flexes fingers and grins) Right:

Pros: Er . . .

Cons:
Expensive
Won't rot down when discarded, or certainly not within our species lifetime
Horribly noisy
Embarassing, unless you like wearing yellow plastic ear muffs while holding a vibrating rigid grey tube (there are sites for people like you, in this case)
No exercise value - tendonitis and back ache more likely
Very polluting - both in noise and fumes
Psychologically damaging: trapped in ear muffs, no birdsong, etc, element of stress from noise and fact that someone might creep up on you in your leaf-blowing world
Possible climatic alteration from all the leaf blowing-winds added up . . .

Great picture I found on the web apropos the War on Leaves.

Also a good example of the waste element. Leaves are meant to fall and create leaf-mush for the soil, so why remove them from the area around the tree? The patch that SEVEN men are homing in on

could be cleared in about five minutes with a rake or broom. Maybe it's part of a scheme to provide work: great, but why waste the petrol? Pick up a rake.

Yesterday in our town the annual leaf war has started.
Three guys with afore-mentioned equipment and a sucky leaf truck. The sucky leaf truck seems a good idea on the whole: a truck with caged sides and giant hoover tube on the back. So why not just have the guys with rakes and brooms - for all the reasons above? It was especially 'Huh'? when the wind got up adding to the leaf-blowage, creating attractive brown and golden spirals; then to redistribute the piles over the road and into shop doorways.

Right, better load up car with rake and other human-driven tools and get over to my gardening job where I shall listen to birds and think about other useless inventions.

frosty dog walk

This morning at -1 degrees, but with sun shining and mist rising from the river.
Some leaf-snaps as I had remembered to take the camera.

come on in, the water's lovely.

Odd things seasons . . .

I cannot now recall that feeling of hardly being able to drag oneself to the fridge for a bottle of slightly cool water, or driving up to the top of a local hill to locate a pocket of non-fetid hot air. When socks are a mysterious collection of unfamiliar things hidden at the back of the drawer and a small salad is sufficient for lunch.

Have been fighting an urge today to lie on the sofa under all available blankets with the dogs, eat chocolate and watch daft films featuring Hugh Grant.
We are all obviously supposed to hibernate between January and April, crawl into a big pile of leaves and emerge blinking in the delicate pale sunlight of spring, unwashed but enthused; ready for the new year.

I was idly perusing youtube for some info to show Ezra about the coldest place to live on earth. There it was, a small settlement in deepest Siberia. A group of lonely houses in a white expanse. A large sign proudly stated the coldest record of recent times - seventy five degrees! The local 'weather man', dressed in a light jumper (as it was only - thirty two degrees) was describing how you would literally freeze outside in a couple of minutes if not wearing the right clothing, (presumably three ski combinations inside a hollowed-out yak).

Getting the car out to go to Super U to get a new gas bottle suddenly seemed a thing of joy and wonder.