Leaf Blowers

I don’t understand leaf blowers.

A lawn service employee came up on our patio today after blowing the grass off of the sidewalk and brandished the leaf blower around. The only thing he accomplished was moving the leaves and sticks and various other things to a different part of the patio. “Thanks,” I said to him as he walked away (though he couldn’t hear me because the window was shut and the engine of the leaf blower was in his ear), “That’s so much more efficient than the wind."

The wind will blow a leaf if the leaf is there to be blown, no matter whether you’ve just blown it into your neighbor’s yard with your ridiculous superfluous machine. If all you want to do is get it off of the sidewalk, I suggest a broom.

My father in law has a leaf vacuum. It’s perfect for their suburban front lawn, which gets coated in the leaves from the two young maple trees in the autumn. My mother in law has put quite a bit of work into landscaping the area, and her strategically placed flowers and paving stones look like they’re covered with a red carpet. Give him about an hour with the leaves and his machine, and my father in law can make the front yard look like summer again.

A vacuum seems like a logical idea to me. It eliminates the need to rake everything up and then try to shove it all into a bag. The only down side would be that there wouldn’t be any piles of leaves to jump in.

We would never use something like a leaf blower inside. I couldn’t imagine trying to clean my kitchen floor by tossing everything either into the air or into another room. It wouldn’t be clean, it would just create more mess that I’d have to clean up elsewhere.

This is why I don’t understand leaf blowers. Something that is supposed to be a tool to help you with work should not create more work.

Maybe leaf blowers secretly grant wishes for a million dollars or for your very own unicorn. But what if you wished for something that would help you take care of the leaves on your lawn?

I guess I just don’t understand leaf blowers.