This past Saturday, 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 my brother who was at Walmart - 'bring another cord'.
While waiting, I grabbed a rake and went after it the old fashioned way. By the time my brother got to the house, 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 my 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 back alley curb for the city to come pick up on this morning.
During the mulching, I had repeated problems with it jamming...I ended up modifying the intake to allow it to munch mulch at 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 injured pitcher, sitting in the dugout while my team plays without me because of rotator cuff problems.
Did I mention the yard is almost full of leaves again this morning?
