Dangerous Things

Yes, I know that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’. So I should really do more research, read deeper if I am to proceed on this upcoming rant, but, in this case, rightly or wrongly, I have to vent.

Dear Reader, please let me know what you think about gasoline powered leaf blowers. I sat and watched the other day as an employee of the District of North Vancouver blew leaves from one place to another, partly on the sidewalk, partly in tree wells. He was suitably protected by a high visibility vest with a miniature umbrella for a hat, incongruous though the headgear seemed.  He went briskly about his business. But, Dear Friends, what precisely was his business? The force of his bloviating caused the leaves to be moved. No self-respecting leaf could resist such power. I watched as leaves were blown from under one tree to under another. A community of leaves was being evicted from its home and being forced to join a wider community of fallen debris. Probably an annual Spring convention of leaves. “Interesting but irritating,” I thought. It was Irritating because of the noise of the machine and the smell of the gasoline. Interesting because leaves don’t fall in the Spring time. That has always been the job of the autumn, the reason that it is called ‘The Fall’ in North America. At least, in my naivety, that’s what I thought. So I don’t really understand why those leaves which had harmlessly nestled into their natural nurturing sleep, bedded gently into a ground-like niche, preparing to give their rich nutrients back to the soil, were suddenly causing such offence. Why had they to be so brazenly and noisily ripped from their comfort where they were doing more good than harm, a type of fascist resettlement to make room for who knows what! I do understand that rains are on their way and that we do not want our drains blocked. But they weren’t blocking any drains in the first place. Indeed the direction in which they were being blown suggested that they were now far more likely to seek out a welcoming grate come the inevitable West Coast downpour.

So the leaf blower came and went, I expected his return with a wheel barrow into which the debris could be carted off. That would have been something really useful. The leaves would have made a really good contribution to many a local composter. It seemed a reasonable idea at the time. But while I watched and supped my coffee, no wheel barrow arrived, the wind muscled its way onto the scene and scattered the neat piles which, I believe, it would have failed to do if they had not been removed from their sheltered niche by leaf blower guy!

So then I started to think about the district employee who is charged with blowing leaves from one patch to another. Despite the fact that he was working outside, it was unfair of me to suggest that he might be an environmentalist. No, he was just a guy doing his job. It was one given to him by a high heidyin in the works department. So presumably there is a lockable shed somewhere at the public works base which has a rack of leaf blowers rather like a gun rack in a United States Sherriff’s Office.  Presumably there is a leaf blower maintenance department. There they oil and tinker lovingly with their equipment. There they have gas pumps with which to provoke the profligacy of noise and fumes, allowing leaf blower guy to strut his importance, focussing wholeheartedly on his artificial extension. No sexual innuendo intended here! But there could be Dear Reader, there could be.

So I guess that I am writing with a total absence of political correctness here.  I have assumed a wonky wokeness.. I have picked on a minority. I cannot imagine leaf blowers are in the majority here in Canada although I don’t know what it is like back East where deciduousness prevails. Maybe some demagogue will eventually strut his stuff and use the freedom to blow leaves as part of his electoral platform. There will be a convention where hopefully all attendees will have to check in their leave blowers at the door. Populist politician will strut to the stage carrying his own gold plated leaf blower and to rapturous cheers will begin his speech by saying with thrusting aggression,

“Out of these cold dead hands.”

The mob will cheer ecstatically and ‘His Blowship’ will find himself elected on a policy of “Leave no leaf unblown”.

“Make Leaf blowers grate again!” is a call that would summon urban Canada to the polls and no, my friends, I have not misspelt anything here!

I don’t like gasoline leaf blowers. They are an affront to a green agenda, a pollutant of noise and smell and greenhouse gasses. And they don’t seem to make things better in our local environment. But then perhaps I am wrong. I need to seek mitigation and further understanding with more research. After all.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.

These shallow draughts intoxicate the brain

And drinking largely sobers us again.”     Alexander Pope

OK so I have scraped the barrel of silliness . So I have poured scorn on an honourable job. I will not be invited to the annual ALBUC (Amalgamated Leaf Blowers Union of Canada) luncheon. That’s OK with me. Any rate I will be too busy out there with my rake, my barrow and my unbroken back  but then I won’t be raking leaves. We did that in our back yard in the months of the Fall..

Now then, Dear Reader, about those pressure washers!!?

Stay safe and well. May the rake be with you,