I nominate this word for the compost pile.

Nonplussed. What a bad, bad word. So confusing. So often misused. So often the cause of me having to stop reading whatever I'm reading to, once again, look it up. It does not mean  "unimpressed" or "indifferent." It means "confused" or "perplexed." Maybe blogging about it will imprint it on my brain.

 

 

I Hate Leaf Blowers.

I've complained before, mildly, about leaf blowers. Well the days of mild complaints have long ended and now I'm an obnoxious, opinionated, out-spoken enemy of these horrible devices.

I will make begrudging allowances for people who have to clear away vast expanses of lawn in public places. The Mall in DC comes to mind. They probably don't have that many leaves but I grant that it's possibly quicker to use blowers in those settings. And the young strapping men usually hired to do such work like to play with them, just as they like to play with guns and other phallic-like items, so they probably do a better job than they would with rakes.

And there are some older people who believe they are being gentler to their bodies by using leaf blowers, so go ahead if you must. Frankly I'm not convinced that it's any more gentle to lug around an electric blower than to brandish a rake but I have no evidence that I'm right.

But for most homeowners or business owners I say get rid of those evil devices and pick up a rake or broom (or hire someone to do that).

I hate leaf blowers because they are:
1. Noisy. Painfully so.
2. Messy. All the leaf mold spores and dust and bits of leaves that get tossed up into the air we breath can NOT be good for us. Not to mention the chemicals that the homeowner may have applied to their lawn. Another thing I hate. Lawn chemicals.
3. Time-consuming. I am positive that it doesn't save any time to use a leaf blower, especially if you live, as I do, some place where you have to dispose of your own leaves. Your options are bagging them up for the trash/recycling crews to pick up or composting them, which is what we do. And is of course what I think everyone should do. Because it takes absolutely no time to maintain; pile up the leaves and walk away. That's it. (Man, I've got at least three rants I could include in this one but I won't.)
4. Resource-wasting. Obvious. They use gasoline or electricity. Boo-hiss.
5. Polluting. The devices themselves must be recycled when they inevitably break down or burn up (which just happened to my neighbor and is why I sat down right now to write this pent-up rant). So what happens when they are discarded? They end up on the coast of some poor nation -- India, Brazil, Ghana -- where children sift through trash piles of hazardous materials.

So there it is. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone. I don't really want to make anyone feel guilty. Truly. But since I can't say all of this to my neighbors -- I have said much of it, and yet they still speak to me! -- I felt the need to lay it all out there.

And I think I violated only one of the Thanksgiving rules I posted earlier today. Rule 2: Speak without accusing.

Image from here. A blog I'll have to check out later.

I'm such a sucker for these Madison Ave tricks--"100% compostable." I wasn't even planning to BUY chips but these caught my eye.

Types of compost piles and devices. These are just some of the many, many variations.

Options 8 and 9 are mine. Option 9 (could honestly be called a no-work compost pile) sits behind my vegetable garden and it began because I just started mindlessly tossing stuff there in the spring and forgot about it. When you lift up all those weeds and grasses you find worms and critters hard at work making compost and humus.
(I'm doing this for a friend who wants some advice on how to start a compost pile.)

Option 2:

Option 3:

Option 4:

Option 5:

Option 6:

Option 7 (container plus turning tool):


Option 8:


Option 9:

Pond and pond ice. I love this cold weather.

I do love the snow and ice and cold, but I also miss being able to dig in my garden. In the DC area we don't always get rock-hard-solid ground in the winter. But this year is different. Tomorrow I'm going to dig in my compost piles just to get my digging fix in.

Thought for the day.

Compost, I guess. Or maybe more precisely leaf mold. I'm digging in a pile that's a couple of years old. Leaf mold, I assume?

I'm putting buckets full of this stuff (along with worm castings) on my newly enlarged vegetable garden. A whopping big 5 x 10 foot garden. Now that the days are finally getting longer I can start to think about what I'll plant. And when. More likely I won't think about it enough, or at least not in a linear, logical way, and I'll end up planting sort of randomly throughout the spring.