It’s November and my neighbor has a new leaf blower. I know because when I walked outside earlier, he stopped me and said in his strong southern accent, “I’ve got a new leaf blower. All electric. I’m done with gas.”
On the plus side, I no longer have to smell gas fumes permeating into my house while my windows are cracked to let in the cool autumn breeze.
On the downside, lithium battery-powered electric leaf blowers let out an ear piercing, sharp whine that I’m not sure other people can hear besides me and my dog.
Me: You hear that, Motzie?
Motzie: Hell yeah, I hear it and I’m deaf now. What is that?
Me: Mike’s new leaf blower.
Motzie: Went electric, huh?
Being able to hear these ear piercing frequencies may have something to do with me having been in a rock band earlier in my life.
I should’ve listened to Pete Townshend of The Who when he put out all those public service announcements back in the 1990s to protect your ears if you’re a musician.
Should’ve read the article in full in Guitar World.
But me and the old bandmates?
We did nothing of the sort.
Crank up the volume!
And now I can hear decibels reserved for canines, domestic cats, and four legged mammals of the equine variety.
Oh, the Leaves. The Leaves, Leaves, Leaves
Where I live there is a mind boggling amount of leaves that fall from trees. The word “forest” is in our community’s name, after all.
The trees are great for shade and keeping the house cool in the summer and for privacy the other seasons.
But come fall, warm up the heating pad and grab the bottle of ibuprofen because the lower back is about to wreak its havoc from collecting leaves — whether you rake ’em, blow ’em, or mulch ’em.
I understand my neighbor Mike. A shared empathy at what lay before us from October through December.
Even past December since oak trees hang on to their leaves for the longest. It’s like the oak trees are waiting for your yard to finally be a blank slate and then they communicate via their root system and say to one another, “It’s Go Time” in a Bojangles drive-thru voice.
Every year I revise the prior year’s plan for collecting leaves.
Whatever I did last year wasn’t sufficient or efficient enough. I keep what worked and scrap what didn’t.
I enjoy physical labor. Being outside. Getting fresh air. Sweating. Feeling a tinge of aches and pain in muscles I haven’t used in a while.
But throwing out my back? Not a fan.
Sneezing and coughing up my lungs for a solid month? No thanks.
I’ve tried every method known to man when it comes to leaf collection except for burning leaves. I’m not burning my leaves. I’m not going to be that guy giving a handful of kids on the street bronchitis.
His name was Johnnie and he was friend Jeremiah’s dad.
But in my older age I do feel a shared experience with the Johnnies of the world.
So many leaves.
So very many leaves.
I imagine at one point, before later transitioning to full-on torch method, that Johnnie once bagged and collected the leaves.
Then one day Johnnie said, “F—k it! Where’s the gasoline?!”
I view leaves as a gift from God. Free mulch from the heavens. Black gold it’s called: leaf mould. But sometimes the Big Man gets a little carried away in his gift giving. There isn’t just abundance. There is overabundance.
Regardless, I take as an environmentally-friendly approach to leaf removal as I’m able. What I do is simple: I bag as many as I can and let the bags sit from fall to winter so they are broken down into humus by spring. Come spring, I use the leaves as mulch in my gardens and flower beds.
I’ve read articles over the years advising homeowners to let the leaves on their lawn lay where they fall. It’s good for the earth. That isn’t an option for me for two reasons:
- Our HOA, an authoritarian regime of the suburban variety, doesn’t allow us to let our leaves stay on our property. They remind homeowners routinely, and if you do attempt this, they’ll send someone to your house to collect the leaves and then charge an exorbitant fee.
- Even if I wanted to let the leaves lay where they fall, there are far too many leaves. They’d smother my yard and kill half the grass and then that’s another issue I’d have to contend with HOA about. I have more than 25 trees within my property line. Not dinky little trees either. I’m talking thirty footers-plus. I also have a tree on my neighbor’s property which drops the most leaves of all. That neighbor, not named Mike, never collects their leaves. And by never, I mean: never. So her leaves blow on to my property and I have to collect them, too.
Then, directly behind my house is a forest. So I get all that too on windy days and the windy days are many.
In the past, I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time mulching my leaves. That way I keep my yard waste from personally clogging up landfills, of which an estimated 33 million tons goes each year in the United States.
The easiest way, in the past, was with my lawnmower but the sheer amount of dust kicking up from it made me physically sick.
Chest cold sick from allergens.
My sinuses rebelled.
Daily headaches.
Then I bought a mulching device. It’s like a big garbage can with a built-in weed-eater string. You feed leaves into the top and voila! Mulch.
But that, too, kicked up a ton of dust.
Yes, I wore a mask and goggles but the dust was too fine and my glasses kept fogging up and I couldn’t see s—t. Also: I’d get the occasional stick shot back up at my forehead and my head would start bleeding. Not a good time.
Last year I collected the leaves in batches using a tarp system. I’d then mulch them down further using my weed-eater. It works well but there were too many leaves and they don’t make a weed-eater of sufficient length for my tall being so my lower back rebelled.
Also: I never was able to mulch all the leaves I collected. By spring, my backyard was still covered in leaves. It was a gargantuan task.
Bow Down Before the Beautiful Invention That Is the Leaf Blower
This year, I’ve gone back to bagging. Like Mike, I use a leaf blower. I use it in combination with a rake. I use my weed-eater some to create more space in the bag, but I’ve largely put that away. It was becoming another step and I figure I’ll let time and nature take its course this year.
One of the more frustrating parts of collecting leaves is that my trees, like many trees, drop their leaves in waves. My yard never looks spotless. I’m not going for perfection. But bagging ten bags of leaves only for the yard to look like you haven’t done a damn thing a day later feels futile.
I know it’s not futile.
But it feels that way.
What may be more defeating is if you bag leaves in the morning, and by evening, it looks like you haven’t raked the yard today.
Do you know how I feel?
I’m not complaining though. This is a job I (unknowingly) signed up for when I bought the house.
It was August that year.
All the beautiful leaves rested firmly on their branches.
Look at all that shade.
Shade a plenty.
The double-edged sword of shade I didn’t recognize.
There’s probably no way in hell I would’ve bought this house had it been late October or November.
“Look at all those leaves,” I’d say to Allison. “Holy hell!”
But it wasn’t October or November. It was August.
“Where do we sign?”
And now, like my neighbor Mike who was born and raised in Georgia, I, too, know what it means to find a good leaf blower on sale at a big box store.
I, too, know what the dopamine hit of that purchase feels like.
Have I told you about my DeWalt? It’s a beaut. It’s corded so less ear piercing noise. But oh, the power.
The power of that device.
Like holding world dominion between my two hands.
Autumn is Mike’s time to reign supreme on the thousands upon thousands of leaves falling into his yard.
This is our time.
Dads unite.
Until we throw out our backs, that is.
Then the neighborhood will be quiet and peaceful again.
Birds chirping.
But now, hear our mighty leaf blowers.
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