I thought retirement was going to be a time of relaxation and enjoyment. Peace and quiet. It is. Except on Tuesdays, when the landscaping crew works around our building.
When I worked, I wasn’t around when the landscapers mowed, pruned, and cleaned our yards. I didn’t understand why my neighbor 20 years ago complained about the noise. Now I know. The endless buzzing and whirring make it impossible to have a conversation, watch TV, think, or nap.
Their equipment is so noisy I sometimes wonder if the purchasing agent shopped for the noisiest equipment available. Maybe they wanted to make sure everyone in the complex, including the hearing impaired, hears that they are working.
It’s not just the noise. The constant, rhythmic pulsing of the hedge trimmers, whirr, pause, whirr, pause, grates like someone trying to turn over an engine that won’t start, only 100 times louder.
But more than hedge trimmers, I detest leaf blowers. Blowers are the scourge of the earth. They make as much noise as chainsaws and almost as much as a jet plane taking off. (1) And I know a bit about jet planes taking off - we used to live two miles off O’Hare runway 22.
California recognized how annoying leaf blowers are. Carmel and Beverly Hills banned leaf blowers in the mid-70s saying they are nuisances. Since then, over 20 California cities (2) and 100 US cities (3) have banned leaf blowers.
It’s not just the noise. It seems like blowers don’t accomplish anything. Here in Florida, we don’t really have massive fall leaf drops as in northern climates. The most we have are some dead bougainvillea flowers and some wayward mulch.
This wayward mulch could be removed with one broom sweep
The blowers don’t remove the debris; they just blow it elsewhere. Some of our less thoughtful landscapers blow the debris from the street into our carports.
Four days after landscaping, there are more bougainvillea flowers in our carport than on the sidewalk
And sometimes they don’t accomplish anything. One night at a campground while we were chatting with friends on the patio we watched a woman with a leaf blower walk aimlessly across the middle of lawns swinging the blower back and forth. There didn’t seem to be any debris to blow. It was annoying on so many levels. We couldn’t talk as she walked by, which she did several times. She wasn’t doing anything productive, and our community was paying for that landscaper service. Just what was she doing? I wondered if she had to empty the tank before she stored the blower, much like a plane has to empty the gas tank before an emergency landing.
Another night it had rained and everything was soaking wet. The landscapers had mowed the lawns so there were a few sodden grass clippings in the curbs. The crew blew them anyway making more of a mess. They ended up in soggy grass clumps that rotted over the next few days.
I’m not the only one that doubts the efficacy of leaf blowers. A Claremont, California study determined that leaf blowers added an hour of work to landscaping crews over a sidewalk vacuum. (2) I didn’t know there was such a thing as a sidewalk vacuum, but I’d be willing to take a collection with my neighbors to buy one for the landscaper. And I’m guessing it would actually remove the debris rather than blow it into our carports.
The same article noted that in three tests a grandmother proved a rake and broom was almost as fast as a gas-powered leaf blower and did a better job. You Go, Granny! (In fairness, she was only in her late 50s).
In The Leaf Blower Manifesto, John Hodgman argues that leaf blowers are "a symbol of the decline of American civilization. The leaf blower is a perfect metaphor for our current national malaise: it is loud, obnoxious, and pointless, yet we continue to use it because we are too lazy and apathetic to do anything else." (4)
When I asked an Artificial Intelligence program (5) to write something funny about leaf blowers, the program responded by saying the constant buzzing and whizzing of leaf blowers can start to “sound like a symphony of noise pollution” and suggested the next time we get annoyed by them we can “imagine the landscapers are an orchestra and imagine what musical instruments they are playing. Tuba, kazoo, or bagpipe.” I’d say it’s more like a vuvuzela, the annoying molded plastic horn that was banned at the world cup because of dangerous noise levels.
From Wikipedia, vuvuzela players at World Cup Games
The AI response also suggested you imagine landscapers as aliens collecting leaves and other things from Earth for their spaceship. Pretty far-fetched. If I was an alien, I wouldn’t collect leaves, I’d collect gold, ice cream, or kittens.
But rather than play these mind games, I think I’ll just buy some noise-canceling headphones. And listen to a real symphony.
Epilogue
Since this is intended to be light-hearted, I didn’t go into some of the other hazards of leaf blowers:
Using a 2-stroke leaf blower for 30 minutes generates as much CO2 emissions as driving a Ford Raptor 3,887 miles. Jason Kavanagh, Engineering Editor, Emissions Test: Car vs. Truck vs. Leaf Blower, Edmunds.com, December 5, 2011.
Blowers emit mold, fungi, allergens, dust, pesticides, and insect parts into the air. Amy McCurdy, You Breathe What They Blow, Patch (San Ramon, CA newspaper), February 8, 2012.
References
Compare the Noise from a Leaf Blower to Other Noisy Things, bard.google.com, May 30, 2023. Note: Bard is an Artificial Intelligence tool that uses Internet references. Bard cited epa.gov, Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as its sources.
Citizens for a Quieter Sacramento, Leaf Blower Facts.
Monica Cardoza, Why Cities are Taking Action to Limit Loud and Polluting Lawn Care, Audubon, Spring 2021.
John Hodgman, The Leaf Blower Manifesto, McSweeney’s, September 2006.
Artificial Intelligence: I used Bard.google.com (produced by Google) a ‘language model’ which generates written responses to questions using vast databases available on the internet plus software that analyzes language and generates textual answers. Let me know in the comments if you are interested in an article about Bard and ChatGPT.
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