11.05.2006

Turning over an old leaf...


Yesterday, the battle began in earnest. The battle of course, is not against flesh and blood but rather every decaying leaf descending upon my front yard, now numbering in the gazillions.

I started the day by climbing up on my roof and blowing out the gutters with 280 mph of Black and Decker ramjet air. After climbing down, I blew leaves from the house towards the street. I say 'towards' the street because about halfway to the street I ran out of cord and my 280 mph of Black and Decker ramjet air went silent. I called Kelsey at Walmart - 'bring another cord'.

While waiting, I grabbed a rake and went after it the old fashioned way. By the time she got home, my two lines of leaves had met in a Great Leaf Convergence in the middle of the yard. They formed a sort of a botanical Maginot Line, defending our house from the occassional dog walker or jogger wandering down the street.

Next, I swapped the blower parts out to make it a mulcher and mulch I did. And mulch. And mulch. I condensed 42,000lbs of leaves into 10 biodegradable bags and stacked them at the curb for the city to come pick up on Monday. During the mulching, I had repeated problems with it jamming...I ended up modifying the intake to allow it to munch mulch and a monsterous rate. It's the American Male Way - we can make anything go faster or work better. Next weekend I think I'll tweak the engine and try and coax it to 300 MPH of ram jet air.

The repetitive motion of the blower, the mulcher, the rake and the bagging have torn the living snot out of my right arm, which is more accustom to a point-and-click workout than actual labor. Now I'll feel like an ihop drummer, sitting in the prayer room while my team plays without me because of rotator cuff problems.

Did I mention the yard is almost full of leaves again this morning?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if your making fun of me or calling me a hard worker. Let's arm wrestle tomorrow to find out who's tuffer.

Randy Bohlender said...

Shawn - to misquote Carly Simon, you're so vain, I bet you think that post was about it. And it's very brave of you to challenge an injured old man to an armwrestling match.

Tom Morse-Brown said...

i never knew you could get machines that would blow leaves and mulch em! we had four people, two rakes and twenty bags - got the yard picked up in under two hours! nice

Randy Bohlender said...

TMB: All yards are not created equal. That being said, next time, don't hesitate to load your four people, two rakes and twenty bags and haul on over and help a brother out...I'll even let you run the leaf blower!

Esther Irwin said...

Isn't it time for another Zoe picture?