Leaves are the bane of my existence

Fall used to be my favorite season.  I loved the combination of cooler weather with blue skies and typically bright sun.  But since we moved to our current house, I dread fall because it means leaf raking.  I know that I've written about leaf raking in the past, so this post is going to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Here are two "before" pictures.  Notice how you can barely see the driveway or yard.


The driveway and front yard


The side yard

What's most amazing about these pictures is that we had just raked the week before.  Literally the next day everything was nearly covered again. This was the day that we started thinking seriously about getting a back-pack leaf blower, since our hand-held one just wasn't cutting it anymore.


Dave on the roof with the hand-held blower

So, we rented a commercial leaf blower from Home Depot to see if it actually was significantly better than the cheaper one we already had.


Looks better already, don't you think? AND, all he had to do was walk


Me working hard while Dave takes pictures

The back-pack blower was definitely better.  Although it was heavy, the weight was evenly distributed on your back, and it definitely moved more air than the smaller blower.  Two days after these pictures were taken, we went out and bought a $500 commercial grade leaf blower than is typically sold to landscapers.  We're just that cool.

What's amazing is that with the leaf blowers, we were able to finish our entire yard in 3 and a half hours.  That may seem like a lot of time to you, but keep in mind that when we were previously doing this with one hand-held blower and a rake, we would often spend up to 8 hours per weekend.  We felt like we still had our whole day ahead of us, even after all of this great work.

Here's the proof - the "after" pictures.


There was a driveway under there!



And grass!


Our beastly mountain of a backyard

How many years will it take before we can justify the cost of the blower? We're still not sure... but the mere fact that I wasn't crying to quit before the job was half-done made it worth it ten times over.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Benefits of renting... raking the leaves isn't my responsibility. :) And that's a good thing because we are surrounded by trees!

Brian K. Root said...

That's a beautiful yard, though! Even when it is covered up by leaves.

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