Thursday, December 15th .....

I’ve never been able to understand the concept of a leaf-blower. I see the eager gardeners out on a Saturday afternoon, blowing leaves and grass clippings off their driveway into the gutter, and watched the wind come up and blow them back again. Or the debris is blown onto someone else’s driveway, and I wonder what’s the point of it all?

I suppose the blower makes a satisfactory noise and, for a fleeting moment, the yard looks better but the job isn’t finished, the problem hasn’t been solved. The problem has simply been moved to another place and, at best, becomes someone else’s problem.


I did wonder when I walked through Bunnings this week and saw all the various models of blowers lined up that perhaps the purpose of a leaf blower is just to give another Christmas gift option for the father who has everything else. It looks good, comes in a range of attractive and masculine colours and, when wrapped, makes a very substantial looking present under the tree. It beats hankies and socks, hands down.

They’ve just finished the last little bit of the new highway outside our house. The asphalt layers have been out this week completing the last two sections of the road surface so that we can have an uninterrupted 100Km/hr ride home. The last part of the process of sealing the road is to spread a layer of fine blue metal on the road. I suppose it stops the tar from sticking to tyres, or it’s a final hard-wearing layer which sinks into the asphalt to extend the life of the road. It’s a dangerous time for drivers because the little chips can be thrown up and can break windscreens, and that’s a particular problem here because the road was built to cater for log trucks going to and from the proposed pulp mill and the drivers have the reputation of being notoriously uncaring of fellow road-users.

Anyway, I’ve noticed that a certain amount of blue metal finds its way to the road edges where it just lies, seeming to cause no harm. However, for some reason, the builders of our highway have decided that the surplus stones have to be shifted off the road. Who knows why! So, there’s a fellow in an orange shirt, armed with a leaf blower walking sideways along the road blowing the stuff into the grass verge. Apart from questioning whether the grass is the right place to shove the stones, I’m astounded at the decision to give him a leaf blower. The nozzle is about 3 inches wide and stones are a lot heavier than leaves so I watch him virtually using the nozzle as a scraper to push the rocks away.

He’s been on the road for three days now. He has a little truck, a sign which encourages drivers to slow down to 60 Km/hr (fat chance!) and 5 or 6 orange cones to give him some protection. He’s on his own and I wonder whether the job has been invented to keep a recalcitrant worker out of sight and out of mind. It’s ludicrous! The section of highway is probably 10 Km long so, in effect, he has a job for life. The thing is, if he had a 15 inch broom, he would do the job in a fraction of the time and wouldn’t be burning fossil fuels into the bargain.