Composting Blows Blowing Away Regarding Leaves
By Bob Small
So The New York Crimes, I mean Times, had a long-winded opinion piece entitled “The First Thing We Do Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers” by a Margaret Renkl. One of my Swarthmore neighbors, John B, hand-delivered it to me –that’s how they do things in Swarthmore — and insisted I write about it. John is anti Leaf Blowers (hereafter LB).
Now, living in Swarthmore, and Delco, the melodic tones of the gas-powered LB reigns supreme at many hours, which leads to outrage in some quarters, though, unless it’s before 7 a.m., it’s kinda legal.
Now there are not any Pennsylvania State Regulations about Gas LB’s (and here you thought there were Pennsylvania State Regulations about everything), but 15 States, including neighboring states, New Jersey and New York, have municipal regulations on this. These municipalities include Princeton and Southampton.
Now we have never used a LB because we refuse to surrender our leaves to the Borough. Instead, our leaves become mulch for our winter vegetables and other plants, and end up in our chicken coop. The leaves make the ground much richer for nature and, by growing and eating our own fruit, as long as we are still allowed to do this, we feel we may be, in our own small way, disrupting this whole notion of the Global supply chain.
At least we hope so.
A rake has advantages over any LB. First, raking does not affect the environment. It is also this thing they call exercise which many married men try to avoid, and it puts you right out there with nature, rather than beyond it.
Which gets us to lawnmowers. We have neighbors using lawnmowers daily, or paying someone. My question has always been Why! Of all the activities I could find (and did as an adolescent), I find daily mowing much less useful than composting (in my house I’m “King of the Compost Pile”), digging for plants, trees, providing for our chickens, etc. However, if this daily mowing keeps our neighbors off the Swarthmore streets, it’s probably useful.
Let’s end with a quote from a former Eagles Player Ricky Waters “For who, for what”. Though I guess if it’s a choice between watching the Fall 2021 Eagles or mowing, then mowing sounds good.
Personally, I prefer to use a rake, too. Though I do run the lawn mover to grind the leaves up, so I can mulch them into the lawn and dump the rest on my compost pile.
Yeah, I compost my leaves, too, because I’m Dutchy, and that means we don’t waste anything. Those leaves, my grass clippings, and all of the kitchen waste, make good, rich black soil to use in my garden.
I learned my lesson about relying on the city when I first moved to Bethlehem. The city does pick up leaves, and yard waste. We have a composting center, and residents can pick up loads of it. But there were two things that led me to decide not to participate.
One was that I raked my leaves into the street like many of my neighbors, and it snowed before the pickup crews came around. So I had a big mound of frozen leaves out in front of my house from Thanksgiving till March, that took up a parking space. After that, I said to myself, “Screw it, grind ’em up and mulch ’em”.
The other was that I picked up a load of city mulch to use around my yard. It was as good as the stuff people pay for at garden centers, expect it had bits of garbage in it-plastic, plastic bag remnants, etc. And it all blew away over the summer. And originally, we loaded it ourselves. You backed your truck or cart into concrete bays set below the mounds of mulch, and loaded up. The city changed that; they have a front-end loader dumping a bucket instead. I preferred to do it myself; it was faster. So, no more leaf collection and city mulch for me. I cut out the middleman.
Don’t agree with state laws on banning leaf-blowers, either. Let municipalities decide; then the people most affected by the decision can get directly involved. The way the founders pictured it.