{"id":497,"date":"2009-10-27T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/10\/27\/tuesday-pet-peeve-common-garden-variety\/"},"modified":"2009-10-27T18:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-27T18:13:00","slug":"tuesday-pet-peeve-common-garden-variety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2009\/10\/27\/tuesday-pet-peeve-common-garden-variety\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Pet Peeve: common garden variety"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a beautiful day today. After days of rain the sun is shining on the snow-capped mountains, and the trees are resplendent in yellows, oranges, and reds.<\/p>\n

So are the roads.<\/p>\n

Yup, the leaves are falling and winter is on the way. And gardeners were out in force this morning, taking advantage of the break in the weather to give their rakes and leaf blowers an airing.<\/p>\n

Because, apparently, fallen leaves shall NOT be allowed to sully any perfect lawns*. They should, instead, be dumped into the road (a bike route).<\/p>\n

Yup, I saw about eight people today moving leaves off the grass (where they run the risk of mulching in and actually doing some good), and into the road. Where they will form a nasty sodden brown mass next time it rains (tomorrow, probably), blocking the drains, and forcing cyclists to ride over a layer of treacherous slipperiness, with a couple of inches of dirty water sitting on top of it for good measure.<\/p>\n

It’s like a man cutting the hair off his head and gluing it to his back and the insides of his ears instead.<\/p>\n

Where do my<\/i> leaves go?<\/p>\n

Some go into my compost, some go into the municipal composting bins (unlimited citywide curbside pick-up of leaves throughout the autumn), and the rest get spread over my lawn and veggie patch.<\/p>\n

A plague of hairy backs upon the leaf blowers!<\/b><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

A leaf blower, yesterday** <\/i><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

————–
*these are the same lawns that are suspiciously green, lush, and wet in the middle of the summer sprinkler bans. As a French friend of mine once said, “this is Vancouver. Your lawn is going to do its best to be brown in the summer, and moss in the winter. Why fight Nature? Have a glass of wine and forget about it”.<\/span><\/p>\n

**sorry, couldn’t resist! This photo did the rounds at work a few years back, as an email with the subject header “Leaf Blower For Sale”. 
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a beautiful day today. After days of rain the sun is shining on the snow-capped mountains, and the trees are resplendent in yellows, oranges, and reds. So are the roads. Yup, the leaves are falling and winter is on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,59,32,35,72,20,25,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-gardening","category-nature","category-photos","category-plagues","category-rants","category-silliness","category-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}