Gardeners spewing gasoline fumes into the air next door for leaf blowing. At least it's not the leaf blowing that was going on here when we had 50-70mph winds 
(Gripe: we're in a freaking climate crisis--cities burning down--and gasoline powered leaf blowers, a major source of pollution due to the inefficiency of two stroke engines, are not yet outlawed here.)
Today I need to use over the ear noise cancelling headphones to block the mind numbly sound of 5 leaf blowers outside my window. Sustained 86Db when I open the window (we bought an affordable but reasonably good level meter). The stench of 2 stroke exhaust is overwhelming.
Every year for 2 weeks we are forced to endure this behaviour, so our neighbours can “enjoy” water sucking un-environmentally sound properties.
I'm at the hospital #today because my uncle just had another surgery. I took my breakfast from the cafe out into the courtyard to eat.
It could have been a peaceful, quiet moment, but instead, there were two landscapers with big beefy leaf-blowers walking back and forth across the courtyard attacking mostly invisible leaves with gusto the entire time I was outside.
Have I mentioned recently how much I fucking hate leaf-blowers?
#LeafBlowers #NoisePollution #LeaveTheLeaves
Leaf blowers kill pollinators. Leave the leaves on the ground. They make for healthier soil and provide necessary shelter for all sorts of little critters. #leaves #Ecology #lawns #LeafBlowers #habitat #pollinators #nature Graphic from "Healthy Yards" https://blog.nwf.org/2023/10/seven-species-that-need-you-to-leave-the-leaves/
Ventura County: $$$ available to replace your old, gas powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers!
Starting October 1, 2024, Ventura County residents, commercial landscaping businesses, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, public schools, and school districts are eligible to apply for a voucher towards new electric lawn and garden equipment in exchange for surrendering their old, gas-powered models. Funding is limited, with $1 million in total funding available. There is $500,000 each for the residential and commercial programs. Take advantage of the limited vouchers now!
I think there may be no sound I find more irritating than the sound of gas-powered leaf blowers.
As a former East Coaster, I thought leaf blowers in California were even more ridiculous than elsewhere.
This story showed me that it's not always about less effort, it's often about less time.
Conclusion: instead of banning leaf blowers, pay landscapers more to do the job slowly, quietly, and cleanly with rakes.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-los-angeles-leaf-blower-wars/
Undergraduate #engineering students at #JohnsHopkinsUniversity has created a quieter leaf blower by adding a simple barrel attachment that reduces the traditional shrill cry of #leafblowers worldwide to a gentler blowing #noise. #everydayscience #acoustics https://hothardware.com/news/college-students-engineer-a-leaf-blower-silencer-that-blew-black-and-decker-away
Blue Texas doing its darnedest in Red Texas
Dallas moving forward with plan to entice residents to switch from gas-powered lawn tools 
"Proposal [to outlaw gas-powered mowers & blowers] was scrapped after state legislators passed a law last year that blocks cities from restricting the use, sale or lease of an engine based on its fuel source."
#EvertonBailey @dallasnews #LeafBlowers #LawnMowers #Sustainability #ClimateChange #Lawncare
If you're not using your gas-powered leaf blower to move yard debris early on weekend mornings from your yard to your neighbors', you're doing it wrong.
#LeafBlowers, #YardWork, #Noise, #TuckersBalls
Trying to think of something witty to say about the truck full of leafblowers blocking the bike lane (and parked facing the wrong direction) today but I'm all out of gas.
The Virginia General Assembly is now past the halfway mark of its first session under Democratic control since the 2021 session, and I have to admit that I expected a little more out of my state’s legislature now that Republicans can’t quietly sink decent bills in committees as they did in the House of Delegates in the previous two-year session.
It’s not that the Western Hemisphere’s oldest continuous law-making body–I can’t write that without noting that for the first time in its 405-year history, the House is led by a Black man, Speaker Don Scott (D.-Portsmouth)–has been spinning its wheels in this session. As of Tuesday’s “crossover day,” the deadline for each chamber to pass any non-budget bill that the other may consider, more than a thousand bills have survived that deadline in our state’s unusually short legislative session.
They include a raft of gun-control measures, some of which attracted Republican votes and may escape a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), as well as various bills to protect Virginians from the enforcement of abortion bans (you can also think of them as forced-birth laws) in other states.
Other accomplishments by either house, in some cases by both, haven’t landed in as many headlines but deserve some recognition: streamlining rural broadband buildout, ending legacy admissions to public colleges and universities, banning unadvertised junk fees, extending health care to undocumented immigrant children, and legalizing the customary cyclist practice of treating stop signs without crossing traffic as yield signs.
I also appreciate how the General Assembly hasn’t rubber-stamped Youngkin’s ploy to help the Washington Capitals and Wizards move to Alexandria’s Potomac Yards neighborhood. That arena belongs in downtown D.C. on top of multiple Metro lines.
And yet the General Assembly has still missed major opportunities–even setting aside Dems postponing votes for constitutional amendments to end felony disenfranchisement and protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights until next year’s session.
(Constituional amendments must pass in separate General Assembly sessions before going to a popular vote, so I can understand how timing them for the same year as legislative elections makes them more obvious campaign issues.)
In particular, it’s disgraceful how often Democrats have quietly sunk decent bills in committees that would have put some limits on the ability of people and even companies to throw money at politicians. Virginia’s lax campaign-finance laws amount to legalized bribery of candidates and elected officials, and Dems in Richmond should be embarrassed to have done so little to fix that. Again.
On a lesser and more local level, I’m also annoyed that a measure to allow municipalities to ban noisy and polluting gas-powered leaf blowers got punted to next year’s session. Related: It’s still dumb how often cities and counties have to get a permission slip from Richmond to do things that would have little to no effect on their neighbors.
And then there are the cases where legislators didn’t even introduce bills that should have had a chance of passing. For example, four years after we couldn’t finish an anti-SLAPP bill to close Virginia to libel tourists, nobody tried to introduce one this year. And a year after a bill to restore direct online filing of state taxes got quashed in a House committee, nobody tried to fix that either.
I’ll be thinking about that last failure when I once again file our state taxes on paper. And when I vote this fall–as I will and as I always do, because I’ve already seen how much my state has changed, one election at a time. And because however grumpy I might get about one season’s legislative results, I’m not going to practice childlike citizenship by holding my voting breath until other people do the work.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/16/progress-in-virginia-still-demands-some-patience/
It should be legal to throw angry geese at people who use leaf blowers.
What are the odds I can convince all of my neighbors to agree on at least one daylight hour, one day a week to not run #leafblowers?
Just one hour without leafblowers is all I ask.
I have heard these things all weekend, including Thanksgiving day... At lunchtime. I am strongly in favor of them being banned. #LeafBlowers
