You have touched on a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely hate gas-powered blowers and here's why....the leaves have to go somewhere and where is that? Into the street? Into your neighbor's yard? Into the empty lot behind you? Yes, it's much easier to use a leaf blower, but to be a responsible citizen, you still need to do something with the leaves. The blower only moves them from spot A to spot B, but doesn't magically get rid of them.

I lived in a small community of duplexes. There were three, two-unit buildings with one in the back and one on each side of a driveway and this place had a major leaf problem; lots of trees. The guy in the very back unit would use his leaf blower to blow all the leaves past his area of the driveway and then leave them in a big pile for the rest of us to deal with. Very inconsiderate, especially since the back units were the only ones with yards.

My next pet peeve is related to this. If you have any kind of a yard, you need a composter, period...no if's, and's, or but's about it. Packing leaves into a trash bag and throwing it in the dumpster is one of the most environmentally irresponsible things you can do. Think about it. You are using a NONbiodegrable thing to contain biodegradable material. How silly and counterproductive is that?

Make a very simple composter out of a small piece of fence by tying the fence into a circle and throw all your leaves in that small fenced enclosure. Water it from time to time as you water your plants, turn it over from time to tiem with a pitchfork or shovel, and in a few short months you will have lots of wonderful nutrient-rich soil for FREE, AND will have gotten rid of all those pesky leaves! You can even place your kitchen scraps in the compost pile; i.e. egg shells, leftover veggies, coffee grounds, anything biodegradable that doesn't contain lipids or fats. It's a great way to get rid of stuff like that so it doesn't stink up your kitchen garbage.

Okay, I have official descended off my soap box. Thanks for listening.

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