Turning a New Leaf

On Saturday afternoon when I got back home from the sustainability conference, my roommate was all excited about the new toy he had just purchased. I looked outside on the porch, and just about had a heart attack.

It was a leaf blower.

My gut reaction was instant shock. I had just attended a seminar earlier that day where we talked about weening ourselves off of these gas-guzzling noisemakers, and my roommate was now the proud owner of one. I felt like someone had just slapped me in the face. I started protesting, but then my roommate pointed out that it was an ELECTRIC leaf blower, so it was fine. But I continued to protest, because quite frankly, I don't understand why people buy these things to chase one leaf off of their driveway, when then can just bend down and pick it up. And whatever happened to rakes? Really, people, it's not that hard pushing leaves into a pile using a giant fork.

So as I continued my rant on leaf blowers, my roommate stopped me and said, "Oh, I think you'll like THIS ONE, Brian!" So I went outside to check out this horrible impulse buy, and then suddenly I got all excited. For this was no ordinary leaf blower. No sir. Part of it was a leaf blower...but the other part was a MULCHER! By adding a long cannon-like piece to the bottom of the leaf blower, it would suck up the leaves, chop them up, and place them in a bag so you could add them to anything you wanted. Like my compost pile! Boy, was I really stoked now!

So I took the Mulchinator 3000 into my hands and started sucking up everything in sight—leaves, sticks, grass, rocks...you name it, and it got shredded. An entire mound of leaves was reduced to nothing within minutes, leaving me with nothing but a large sack full of mulch and a huge grin on my face. It made me feel like an environmental version of Santa Claus. Good thing there were no kids around, or they would've received stockings filled with dead shredded leaves.

I took my bounty of mulch and added some to my compost pile, and then like a squirrel saving up for the winter, I stored the remainder in another large trash can. Never in my life would I have ever thought that I'd be excited about shredded leaves. It must be a sign that I'm getting old. Or possibly just losing it.