leaf blower

no, we do not have a leaf blower. leaf blowers are stupid. feel free to disagree, but they're still stupid. we have all the other necessities: lawn mower, weed eater, metal rake, bamboo rake, wheelbarrow, shovel, wood chipper. you know. things we all need in order to survive. because survival begins with a pretty lawn.

but here in brooklyn, the landlord and the surrounding neighbors have all purchased the same lawn service. i should probably explain here that the "lawn" is a patch the width of a brooklyn victorian house and it's about three feet from the porch to the sidewalk. you could mow the thing in one pass, except there's a raggedy maple sitting right out my front window, which means it's right in the middle of the strip of lawn. you'd have to detour a bit. i should mention that our neighborhood was designed a little more than a hundred years ago to be pretty. most houses have massive london plane trees shading the "yards" because they are the ultimate victorian trees. i don't know why. for those of you from the midwest or texas, think sycamore. but we have that ratty maple, which is decidedly unvictorian and very obviously a replacement for something more majestic. and a hydrangea on either side of the steps up the porch. usually they bloom beautifully with fat blue and green clumps of flowers, but the lawn guys pruned them funny last year and now they match the maple. dismal. and there are a few raggedy mystery shrubs plopped on the strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the street. there is very little to do. except blow leaves. and this is the problem.

around eleven am i looked out my bathroom window to see a man wearing some sort of jetpack contraption with a vacuum cleaner hose hanging out the side. he looked like ghostbusters. seriously. and he fired the thing up. now, i have to admit i'd spent the last half hour or so stalking dustbunnies with my own ancient electrolux canister monster, a beast older than i am which emits a howl that generally gives me a few minutes rest from my tinnitus, which it simply overpowers. but i heard the roar of the leaf blower over the vacuum, over the roar of my own stupid haunted ears. so i looked outside. it was dark outside. i did mention that this was 11 am, right? i had been so terribly involved in my own fascinating housecleaning and the occasional snippet from npr on chinese culture that a rather magnificent storm had snuck right up on me. i looked out the window just as the folks at npr started to crackle and fade. then the sky got in on the act and there was an entire thunderstorm outside, complete with wind, rain, thunder, lightning and the promise of hail. i love the promise of hail.

now, being a homeowner for the first time and being the owner of a car that is not the same age as me, you'd think i'd worry about hail. nope. i can't help it. i like the thunderstorms and i really, really like the hail. hail comes sometimes after tornadoes and when i was a kid, our freezer housed more than a few hailstones. there's something about ice falling from the sky in summer that's just dizzying to a kid. and to me. still. so i looked out the window, waiting for the hail. then i ran to the tv. the tv promised hail on three channels. and lightning and damaging winds. so i ran back to the window. bring it on. i was ready to run out just as soon as i heard the first ice-on-metal crash. i was frightening the dogs.

but leaf blower guy was still out there. wind whipping everywhere, lightning threatening to help him with his questions about an afterlife. and leaves scattering every which way. but he kept it up, blowing lawnmower gas scented air back over the ozone smell of a good storm.

later, the monstrous part of the storm has passed, i think. no more thunder. no more lightning. the hail went over to queens, i guess, and there was a tornado warning for some part of the middle of long island. the leaf blower guy and his pals are gone, too. nobody got struck by lightning. nobody got beaned by hail or washed away in a flash flood or sucked up into the sky. that's happening on the news further east on the island. flooding. suffering. threat of being sucked up into the sky. awfulness. but it is nice out now, cool. the sky is starting to lift a bit. and there are leaves everywhere.