Leaf Me Alone

While my backyard is not yet inundated with the falling horde, my front yard is pretty leafy. I do not have a tree out front, so it is all from the neighbors’ trees. Small and yellow for the most part. I have kept my walk and drive clear, but I cannot do much more than that. What it needs is mowed and the munched leaves tossed on the compost piles.

So this evening I take the trash bin to the street. My neighbor to the south has her yard guy taking up the leaves from her tree. Huh. There weren’t any leaves behind or under my truck this morning. Now there’s drifts. Damn. I like my neighbor, we get along. I don’t know who blew the leaves into my driveway, but the leaf blower was lying right there. I was annoyed. How rude.

I came in and got dressed, grabbed the battery, and the suck began. I got all the new leaves, up and down the edges of the drive, and a good portion of the gutter. I wore my ear protection, my padded gloves, but didn’t grab a mask. It’s middling cool out, very nice. I sucked and sucked, three bags worth. That’s the small bag on the leaf vac, the one with the zipper that sticks. I have repaired it once already. Geez. This is a light duty leaf vac, only good on hard surfaces, it doesn’t do anything on grass. Oh, a few light leaves on top, but nothing of note. Blowing the leaves is the same thing, not on grass. It will grab up twigs and pebbles, but spits them back out.

So that’s done. The lawn, not so much. I do have Larry’s Toro, it’s pretty high power, but it is corded, and over half as tall as I am. Pretty sure I can’t wrangle it. I know I can’t handle the mower. I surely cannot rake. I could spot rake, but it would take me until January to clear the front. The tendonitis is back, so my hand not only hurts, but will fail while grasping or lifting. that sucks so hard. I need to wear a mask when sucking leaves; my mouth was really dry and bitter after. I went to brush my teeth and started hacking up grey crap. Then blowing grey crud out of my nose. I had to use my saline rinse bottle. I am traumatized.

Oh yeah, snow in the forecast for Sunday. Fun, fun, fun.