We install sprinklers, then complain about water bills. We fertilize our lawn then complain it smells like horse diarrhea. But the stupidest thing we do with our lawns is leaf blowing.

Why do you want to get leaves off your lawn anyway? They’re beautiful. If you leave them to decompose, they add nutrients to the soil so you can grow plants you can actually eat, like fruits and vegetables, instead of more useless grass. I don’t get. But if you insist on removing leaves from your lawn, do not use leaf blowers. Their disgusting loud screech pisses off everybody within a half mile radius.

Leaf blowers should be banned. If I throw a party with loud music and a bunch of people having a good time, police can shut it down and fine me. But if somebody spews a deafening, carbon monoxide tornado across the whole neighborhood…Perfectly legal, even if the culprit is an illegal immigrant! But I don’t blame immigrants and I don’t blame gardeners.

I blame the client, the prick who hires leaf blowers. A study by The Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power has proven leaf blowing can take just as much time as raking. Yet somehow, idiots still think because it’s larger and louder than a rake, a leaf blower must be more effective. This stupidity exists in all industries. Clients are more comfortable paying a cameraman with an obnoxiously large camera even though a pocket camera today shoots higher quality. Office managers think the guy typing the most at the office is more productive, when the truth is he just fucks around on Facebook all day. Likewise just bc a leaf blower can blow winds up to 180 mph that doesn’t mean it’s accomplishing anything. 180 mph is faster than a category 5 hurricane. Why would you inflict the wind force of a hurricane on your lawn? What does that accomplish (other than noise & pollution)?!

How bad is the pollution? One leaf blower produces as much exhaust pollution in an hr as 17 automobiles. A separate emissions test revealed that 30 minutes of lead blowing is the same emissions wise as driving a 2011 Ford Raptor from Texas to Alaska. Any benefits to leaf blowing are not worth the health risks it poses to everyone around it, especially the one operating it.

Sometimes leaf blowers seem faster bc their operators often save time by never actually picking up the leaves. They just blow them into the neighbor’s yard… Where they will forever be blown back and forth. And if you still don’t believe they’re faster too, check out this study where a 50 yr old grandmother clocked in a better time than both a gas and electric blowers!

Leaf blowing is like brushing your teeth with a chainsaw; like driving a military vehicle to work; like hiring a john deere excavator to eat your cereal instead of just using a spoon. If want leaves off your lawn, save yourself and your neighborhood the headaches. Get some exercise and use a goddam rake.

If you’re concerned about money, rakes are also more affordable…