by Shepherd Bliss
December, 2009--Leaves are one of nature's most miraculous creations. They tie it all together. They rise from the ground, reach to the sky, and bring life to the Earth. Leaves do many good things--manufacture food for trees and other plants, use the sun's energy to transform carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, and decompose water (H2O) into oxygen and hydrogen. The resulting complex compound, glucose, is the universal and basic energy source for all living organisms. Leaves also provide beauty and delight, thus meriting our praise for their abundant gifts. Children and animals love frolicing in fresh piles of leaves.
Yet by the late 20th century human ingenuity, irritated by fallen leaves, created an industrial machine--the highly-polluting, gas-operated leaf blower--that disrupts leaves' natural cycle--and night-workers' sleeping cycle. Left to their own, leaves leave their perch and fall to the ground and remain there. Even when brown, dead, and on the Earth, their transformative work continues--first as mulch, then as compost, and eventually integrating into the soil that nourishes plants. Interrupting that cycle will have all kinds of negative unintended consequences.
Leaves in Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Where do the blown leaves go? Into streets, storm gutters, neighbors' yards, and sometimes into sterile, lifeless plastic body bags. Then the leaves' beloved and fun-loving dance partner--the wind--sometimes returns to blow them back to their intended local resting place. Leaf blowers then return with their industrial toys and weapons, and with vengeance; the combat resumes.
It's a sad sight to see big men armed with dangerous weapons taking on such tiny leaves, a source of our existence, and spewing toxins into the air and invading homes with loud noises. Within the space of my own home I do not appreciate sound trespass. I would rather have some quiet and serenity to sleep, eat, heal, make love, listen to music, study, work, or engage in some other uninterrupted activity. Dirt and other debris is kicked up into the Particulate Matter that contaminates our air and our lungs.
An estimated three million leaf bowers currently pollute the U.S. Their numbers rise rapidly. A gas-operated two stroke leaf blower releases far more greenhouse gas emissions than an automobile; it worsens the chaotic climate changes that already threaten human habitation on this globe. Further documentation of the damage of leaf blowers is available at www.zapla.org and www.nonoise.org.
Fortunately, some 400 U.S. municipalities have banned and limited leaf blower use. Residents of other communities--such as the small town of Sebastopol, where I live--are organizing against blowers and their detriments.
Lacking leaves' natural feeding of the soil and plants once they have been forced off their natural resting place, some humans substitute chemical fertilizers in their gardens. This compounds the damage of an interrupted natural cycle by trying to replace it with a toxic human-made cycle, which profits the industrial manufacturers of these imitations. Humans do not do a good job of managing our wastes; we soil our bed--worse than the chickens on my small farm.
In its online article "Mulch--A Gardener's Best Friend," Sonoma County Master Gardeners writes the following: "Fallen leaves are great! If you rake them on to your beds in the fall, they will soften the heavy rains' effects on your soil, and they will protect your plants during freezing temperatures. If they are dry even crumbling them with your hands as you spread them around is effective...they are porous and decompose quickly, enriching the soil."
Leaf blowers versus leaves is a classic machine versus nature conflict. Sierra Club founder John Muir wrote the following: "The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual."
Shepherd Bliss has run the organic Kokopelli Farm for nearly two decades. He bought a place to move to the downtown of small town Sebastopol, but then heard the rampant leaf blowers. So he has joined other town-dwellers to seek a leaf blower ban. Shepherd teaches part-time at Sonoma State University and has contributed to over two dozen books, most recently a chapter on agrotherapy--farms as healing places--to the Sierra Club Book's "Ecotherapy: Healing with the Earth in Mind." He shares the Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace website with the Veterans Writing Group: www.vowvop.org.
Photo by Eric Miller