I was on one of my standard urban walks the other day which (as is often the case) has a cut-through pedestrian route through a managed housing area. In it, a workman was clearing leaves with a leaf-blower, from under the bushes where they had fallen onto soil. These were being placed into plastic bags to be taken away as waste. This was an urban area, so I don't doubt that a fair amount of wrappers and other rubbish was coming out from under the bushes too.The urban perception is that a pile of dropped leaves is waste, rubbish, messy and so people litter into it. Given the lack of public toilets in cities nowadays, I'm sure they do worse.
But high-powered air blasts do more than just remove the leaves. Top layers of soil get scoured off too, leaving (and now I looked at them, they did have this) clean, exposed upper roots. The soil becomes stonier as smaller particles are swept away. Leaf blowers are more normally used on driveways, pavements and lawns of course, where there is either protection for the topsoil, or top-soil is a non-issue. But these are also spaces which are flat enough for use of a broom to be practical.
It takes longer (of course) to sweep or litter pick, than to blast your way through the garbage using a jet of air powered by a small 2-stroke petrol engine. It's also perceived as a less-skilled job, although there are (of course) better and worse ways to sweep, just as there are to dig, rake, hoe or do any other piece of manual labour. Leaf blowers are undeniably a lot more fun than rakes and brooms, especially when combined with a teeny-tiny van to transport around huge piles of leaves. These vans, nowadays, are pretty much always electric.
So, give me a moment here. Given that sometimes (not always!) it is better to be hands-off with your leaf piles, howsabout we have roll out some electric leafblowers. They'd make less noise, (they'd also probably be lower-powered, but I think that could be argued to be a good thing) the pollution would be removed from the immediate area, (important in urban areas with high particulate loads) and the fun would be retained, but become more of a one-tool-in-the-box rather than a strapped on, fully committed full-bore one-solution-fits-all sorts of fun. The leaf blower could holster in a charge port in the vehicle next to the brooms and the pickers. Lovely!!!!
For domestic use, well. I get a lot of leaves in my garden from my neighbour's tree. I use them as mulch, or the worms eat them. There's this making leaf mould thing people get really excited about, but you can actually just leave the leaves. There's this mowing your leaves thing that people advise as being great for lawns, and I guess you can do that, it's not going to do any harm, but you can actually just leave the leaves. Your largest leaf will still fit inside an earthworm. It's what they do. Your leaves are not a problem. You can just leave them.
But high-powered air blasts do more than just remove the leaves. Top layers of soil get scoured off too, leaving (and now I looked at them, they did have this) clean, exposed upper roots. The soil becomes stonier as smaller particles are swept away. Leaf blowers are more normally used on driveways, pavements and lawns of course, where there is either protection for the topsoil, or top-soil is a non-issue. But these are also spaces which are flat enough for use of a broom to be practical.
It takes longer (of course) to sweep or litter pick, than to blast your way through the garbage using a jet of air powered by a small 2-stroke petrol engine. It's also perceived as a less-skilled job, although there are (of course) better and worse ways to sweep, just as there are to dig, rake, hoe or do any other piece of manual labour. Leaf blowers are undeniably a lot more fun than rakes and brooms, especially when combined with a teeny-tiny van to transport around huge piles of leaves. These vans, nowadays, are pretty much always electric.
So, give me a moment here. Given that sometimes (not always!) it is better to be hands-off with your leaf piles, howsabout we have roll out some electric leafblowers. They'd make less noise, (they'd also probably be lower-powered, but I think that could be argued to be a good thing) the pollution would be removed from the immediate area, (important in urban areas with high particulate loads) and the fun would be retained, but become more of a one-tool-in-the-box rather than a strapped on, fully committed full-bore one-solution-fits-all sorts of fun. The leaf blower could holster in a charge port in the vehicle next to the brooms and the pickers. Lovely!!!!
For domestic use, well. I get a lot of leaves in my garden from my neighbour's tree. I use them as mulch, or the worms eat them. There's this making leaf mould thing people get really excited about, but you can actually just leave the leaves. There's this mowing your leaves thing that people advise as being great for lawns, and I guess you can do that, it's not going to do any harm, but you can actually just leave the leaves. Your largest leaf will still fit inside an earthworm. It's what they do. Your leaves are not a problem. You can just leave them.
No comments:
Post a Comment