Raking and Blowing

This weekend I tackled a task two years in the making: The Raking of The Backyard.

Two years of oak leaves, acorns, and some other kind of leaves I can't readily identify rendered the backyard a sea of dead leaves with green shoots of something occassionally peeking out. Accepting the fact that this year we may spend a lot more time around New Home than I anticipated, it was time to make the backyard a usable locale instead of a leaf ridden wasteland.

5 hours in on Saturday, I made something of a dent. It was me and a rake: rake the leaves and accompanying detrius (acorns, bark, branches, nameless bits of dog goo) into a pile, shovel the pile with the rake into a bag. Crimp the bag, shoulder lift it out to the side of the house. Rake another pile. Repeat until yard is clean.

This method will work, although there are two major problems:

1) It takes a long time.

2) Even with gloves, you develop blisters (and then calluses) at the base of your thumb and index finger.

All of a sudden, Neighbor B pops his head over the fence. "Hey neighbor!"

"Hey!" I replied, stopping to rest on the rake.

"I've got the leaf blower. Cleaned my yard right up. Want to borrow it?"

"Sure" I said, never having actually used a leaf blower before.

He showed the basics of doing it, then set me on my path. Armed with my upgraded technological rake, I returned to the backyard to slay leaf piles with new weapon.

The leaf blower worked fine. However, I noticed a few issues as I worked the second half of the yard:

1) It only worked well on truly clear surfaces. In grasses, leaves didn't really blow out.

2) It blew hard - and it blew everything. Even the dirt that I managed to scrape over with the rake and leave behind got moved, leaving a sterile ground with grass roots hanging on for dear life.

3) It was loud. Raking you can hear the sounds of neighboorhood living and birds all around you as you work. With a leaf blower, you hear...the leaf blower.

I finished the other half of the yard, then brought it back. "Are you sure you're done?" he pressed.

"I am" I said. "Thanks for letting me borrow it."

"You're sure?" he pressed.

"I'm good. Thanks."

I finished off in the rapidly darkening evening with my rake. Sure, I wasn't moving leaves quite as fast, but the evening birds sang beautifully and I got to see the night sky lit by the moon as I finished up.

Weekend total: 31 Thirty Gallon Bags (930 gallons) of leaves, acorns, and unmentionables with 1/3 of the yard to go.

Will it take me longer this way? Sure it will. But will I be in the experience of raking rather than rushing through it to get to something else? Absolutely.

Blisters heal. You cannot, however, hear the song of the cardinal above a motor's drone.