4 ms·

Basically it comes down to this: lawn grass is ground cover and leaves kill lawn grass. So you have to get them off. Getting them off with a rake sounds fine if

Basically it comes down to this: lawn grass is ground cover and leaves kill lawn grass. So you have to get them off. Getting them off with a rake sounds fine if you don't actually own a lawn and this is all academic. Otherwise you probably find raking very labor and time intensive. Firing up a blower to whoosh the leaves back into the forest where they came from is so much easier and faster. So obviously the real problem is owning an unproductive acre of suburban land that needs ground cover. Reply to this comment if you'd like to buy mine.

jimmytucson 8y ago
> David Dudley is the executive editor of CityLab. He is the former editor in chief of Urbanite magazine Sounds like he spends a ton of time around lawns.
colanderman 8y ago
> Otherwise you probably find raking very labor and time intensive. I find it to be a good excuse to spend time outdoors performing a meditative physical activity. I would be mortified to subject my neighbors – 10 or so within 200 ft radius – to the hellish cacophony of a leaf blower. Even an electric one, which one of my neighbors uses, sounds like someone is running a cheap air compressor inside my home for hours on end.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  I wish you were my neighbor. My neighbors do whatever they want - however pointless - whenever they want.
- markbnj 8y ago
  For one thing it's shared pain: I'm not subjecting my neighbors to anything they are not in turn subjecting me to, so we all deal with our pain in the name of leaf removal once per year. Also, we all collectively have many opportunities for "meditative physical activity." There is grass to be cut, beds to be weeded, snow to be shoveled, paint to be painted, etc. What we have less of is time. I was born in the 60's so I've done a lot of hand raking, including my current property before I owned a blower. It's a matter of probably 8 to 10 hours to do the whole thing. So we all make judgments, I guess, about where to spend the free time we have, and what amount of labor saving is worth what amount of cacophony.
brokenmachine 8y ago
If leaf blowers are so time efficient, then why do I hear them for so long and so damn often? I'm inclined to suspect it might be because the landscapers are paid by the hour.

jimmytucson 8y ago

> David Dudley is the executive editor of CityLab. He is the former editor in chief of Urbanite magazine Sounds like he spends a ton of time around lawns.

colanderman 8y ago

> Otherwise you probably find raking very labor and time intensive. I find it to be a good excuse to spend time outdoors performing a meditative physical activity. I would be mortified to subject my neighbors – 10 or so within 200 ft radius – to the hellish cacophony of a leaf blower. Even an electric one, which one of my neighbors uses, sounds like someone is running a cheap air compressor inside my home for hours on end.

brokenmachine 8y ago
I wish you were my neighbor. My neighbors do whatever they want - however pointless - whenever they want.
markbnj 8y ago
For one thing it's shared pain: I'm not subjecting my neighbors to anything they are not in turn subjecting me to, so we all deal with our pain in the name of leaf removal once per year. Also, we all collectively have many opportunities for "meditative physical activity." There is grass to be cut, beds to be weeded, snow to be shoveled, paint to be painted, etc. What we have less of is time. I was born in the 60's so I've done a lot of hand raking, including my current property before I owned a blower. It's a matter of probably 8 to 10 hours to do the whole thing. So we all make judgments, I guess, about where to spend the free time we have, and what amount of labor saving is worth what amount of cacophony.

brokenmachine 8y ago

If leaf blowers are so time efficient, then why do I hear them for so long and so damn often? I'm inclined to suspect it might be because the landscapers are paid by the hour.