You
know you’re an obsessive type when you find yourself vacuuming the lawn.
Sadly,
this has become a daily ritual for me ever since I bought one of those leaf
sucker/blower things. I haven’t figured out where to blow the leaves to yet, so
I am stuck in perpetual vacuum mode – and I have to admit I enjoy it, despite
knowing I look like some kind of madman, lumbering around with this huge (and
heavy) yellow leaf-zapper strapped over my shoulder, with a twisted and sly grin on my
face.
We
have leaves everywhere, of course, but cannot – must not! – allow them to settle on the grassy plot between the
houses now that we’ve spent so much time and money laying it out. The leaves
get soggy and make patches where the grass cannot grow. Not to mention the
surrounding white gravel paths that look oh-so-awful when smothered by leaves.
The
irony is that most of the leaves are falling from the two hazelnut trees that
have already caused us about a hundred man-hours in the process of scooping,
sorting, and sacking the nuts. Now that the shower of hazelnuts is finally complete,
the trees are shedding tons of leaves each.
So
autumn to me is spending a few hours each morning sucking them up whilst
dreaming of schemes to keep the damned things on the trees. (For instance, could
I fill our paint sprayer with Elmer’s glue and water and jet the solution onto
the branches?)
The
leaf blower is just another expensive weapon in our growing lawn care arsenal.
Who would guess that two guys fresh from the city (Paris and the center of Todi
before that) would now own a riding tractor-mower, a regular lawnmower, a chain
saw, a weed-whipper, a weed-spraying device, a rather deadly looking axe, a
wheel barrow, several miles-long garden hoses, and an assortment of rakes,
shovels, picks, clippers, and snippers.
Where
are the windowsill flower pots of yesteryear?
No comments:
Post a Comment