Posted on Sat Jun 21, 11:50 AM in Livin'
Why does this bother me? Maybe it’s genetic.
It is a beautiful weekend here in Tosa, and as can be expected, the usual ensemble of yard implements are employed in making grasses shorter, shrubs less shrubby, and walkways cleaner. An unspoken rule: homeowners must wait until weekend mornings to power up these weapons of turf warfare.
While we were still living in Madison, our last rental in the post-war boom neighborhood behind Olbrich Park, there were a fair number of elderly homeowners who partook of such mechanical help. In some cases, grown children stepped in to assist, but in others, as the case with our neighbor lady, they used their own. She astounded both of us by spending over an hour each weekend blowing what seemed to be every blade of just-cut grass off her driveway, walkway, sidewalk, apron, and into particular piles onto the curb. She was not wearing ear protection, but perhaps it was too late to save that, given her age.
I was never raised with a particularly snide view towards mechanical yard implements. My parents always used a lawnmower with an engine. But we always raked, and shoveled snow. Perhaps more importantly, we always kept a fairly quiet house and really enjoyed true peace and quiet, even while living in the city.
While he was alive, my grandpa Steinbruecker fought against noise pollution, during a time when it probably wasn’t fashionable, nor did it register on many people’s social radar (he also fought against light pollution before most people cared, too). My grandpa built his house on the edge of town, and later, the city decided to raise a junkyard kitty-corner from the property. The junkyard had a fence high enough to hide the view, but it could never veil the noise, with a huge crane tossing vast piles of metal around daily. My mom and her siblings have told me of stories where my grandfather would at times stand on the edge of his driveway just glaring across the street. My own memories of having stayed there for weeks at a time include hearing noises across the road that, to me, sounded strikingly similar to those of a noisy factory. He persistently contacted city officials to find some way of limiting the junkyard’s hours of operation, or shutting it down completely (especially as the area grew more residential with even a school on the opposite side), but while he was alive, nothing happened.
Today, there is a gentleman across the street trimming bushes, for the first time that I can remember, really. Many small branches are on the ground in the front yard of his property. For the last hour, he has spent his time using an over-the-shoulder device which sucks debris up a hand-held chute into a pouch on his back. This pouch then gets emptied somewhere else. He is having problems because many of the branches, while small, are not shaped for the most ideal… sucking. To fix this, he bends over regularly to better align the branches into his device. The pouch then gets emptied into the back of his truck, which is parked about 10 feet away. He doesn’t appear to be wearing ear protection, either, but appears physically able in every other way.
The only thing I could think of as I watched him was, “…Rake that shit!”
Do these kind of machines really make life easier? Don’t get me wrong—we own a power mower that we use when we fall behind on mowing with the reel mower (long blades render it useless, we’ve found), and we have a snowblower (and given the last season of snow, praise jebus for that purchase). It’s all these little other machines that do the who-cares-how-good-it-looks chores which I don’t understand. We live in the city with small yards. Brooms sweep just as well as machines blow (or suck, for that matter). Can’t walk from the back yard to the front with all those branches? A one-time purchase gets you a wheelbarrow that doesn’t use electricity or gas. If you are healthy, you get exercise. And peace and quiet.
But it isn’t my place to tell people how to live their lives; I just have to figure out how to deal with their choices. I suppose I could write them letters… but in the case of my grandfather, we had to wait until after his death before the junkyard was shut down by the city. My intolerance for unnecessary noise hasn’t abated over the years, though, and I often wonder if I’ve inherited hypersensitive hearing. Regardless of my alleged genetic dispositions, it will probably be the day that I, too, die before people wake up on beautiful Saturday mornings, stand outside in their yards, and enjoy the cacophony around them… not of their lawnmowers, their leafblowers, or their edge trimmers, but of the breeze in the trees, the robins calling, or even the conversation of their fellow neighbors.
Funny, I was thinking about this issue yesterday as I was enjoying what’s been probably our second sunny weekend of the season (the first was when you were out). The cottonwood seedlings have finally stopped “snowing”, so I got the deck all cleaned off and settled down at our outdoor table with a refreshment and a magazine. And then a few minutes later, our neighbor decided to start up his chainsaw. I had mixed feelings. On one hand I felt frustrated that finally I got a chance to relax in the sun and now I have this chainsaw buzzing in my ears, but on the other hand, it was a perfectly reasonable time for him to be doing this. And I totally support using a chainsaw for some tasks vs. a hand saw. (I don’t own a chainsaw, but on some occasions I wish that I did.) What I finally determined is that he wasn’t going to be doing this activity forever, so I should just find something else to do and then come back to my relaxation time. A half hour later I got to enjoy the quiet time I was looking forward to. :-)
I think that it is very sad that leaf blowers are so ubiquitous among city homeowners. The average house in my neighborhood has about 20 feet of sidewalk susceptible to the accumulation of grass clippings. While our neighbors take turns, relay style it seems, with their leaf blowers, Brook runs the mower over the sidewalk on his way back to the garage. This has proven to be very affective at removing the clippings from the sidewalk and works much quicker than the leaf blowers. For areas such as stairs, he gets out a broom and makes quick work of the clippings.
I really wish that our neighbors would think of using this approach, or at the very least coordinate the timing of their lawn care. Some Saturdays it seems like as soon as one neighbor is done, another starts and the day is filled with the noise.
Of course there are other days when it is very peaceful and all you hear are happy birds and the chatter of children.
@Amy: Ultimately, I do feel that people have a right to do what they want, as long as whatever it is they are doing doesn’t a) disrupt the peace, and b) isn’t offending anyone. Which none of this does. So yes, I should just sit and wait it out.
But, as Gail mentions, there are days when it seems like the area Yard Warriors have an Annoying Noise Relay, and I’m left to count how many times the baton gets passed. It’s just amazing to me how many people do this, every single weekend, and never ask themselves if what they are doing is actually making life easier. Chainsaws? I would have to say yes. But what I specifically observed? Not so much.