Blown Away...

Well, with the knowledge that there is a disposable toilet brush in the world (see previous post) has come the freedom to ponder other questions; to tackle other issues, if you will (and you will!). Here's one that has been gnawing at me for a little while:

I live and work in neighborhoods where people take their lawns and landscaping fairly seriously. I am lucky to spend a lot of my time in a particularly beautiful part of a very nice city (hooray for Memphis!). I regularly see homeowners or their chosen landscaping service hard at work around the neighborhood. At some point in pretty much every project I see undertaken, someone pulls out the blower. This relatively new addition to the home gardening scene perplexes me. You see, there is nothing in or on these lawns that actually needs to be blown around. There are, however, many things (cut grass, leaves, etc.) that need to be bagged and discarded. It seems that folks are under the impression that the easy availability of the blower has made bags and bagging unnecessary. Now - my neighbors seem to believe - it's okay to just blow any trash out of your yard and into the street and everything's clean. I guess trash bags were just a temporary band-aid on the problem that blowers have now fixed?

Everything I have ever learned about cleaning, being part of a community, or finishing a project tells me that this is not right. That you are not, in fact, finished with your work as long as you've gotten all the things you don't want anymore out into the street. Apparently, though, the common sense of many members of my community has been sucked through their garden hoses right out of their heads. Or perhaps someone just blew it into the street for someone else to find and clean up.