Call of the leat

FALL IS falling in on us faster than it has ever fallen before.

Your days ahead should now be full with the tasks of picking up the pieces summer left behind and preparing the garden for what by all accounts is going to be a real humdinger of a winter.

First, the leaves! The billions and billions and never-ending billions of leaves.

If you are one of those who persist in hitching along in the horse-and-buggy world of leaf rakes instead of succumbing to those tempting ads for leaf blowers, good on ya. You’re a better man than me,. Gunga Din.

The quintessential leaf rake should be light, springy, metal (leave the bamboo and plastic ¢ on the rack) and, hopefully, . someone else’s hands.

A good metal rake may cost substantially more than its less longevous counterparts, but I am one of those ‘‘I’d rather spend it once” kind of guys.

The only way 2 good metal leaf rake will wear out is if the tines come loose in the housing. Metal rubbing on metal will quic!ly grind thin spots at strategic spots and before you know it you will be reminded of that old, toothless comb you just couldn't part with, or Granddad.

A good friend (don’t teli him called him that; he has difficulty with commitments) gave me a great hint.

Take your newly purchased rake that cost an arm and a leg and

‘spend the other iwo appendages

Geoif Tobiassen

OVER THE GARDEN GATE

getting a welder to braze all of those strategic weak spots.

Tell him to pay careful atten- iion to the point at which the tines are bundled at the handfe and where they cross the horizéntal brace.

This may seem a little excessive but 1 have seen the way this guy works and how long his tools last.

If you 100 would like to turn your common garden tools into heirlooms, then follow his lead.

One nice thing about leaf blowers is their ability to dig the evergreen needles out of the lawn. I have spent hours trying to get them out with my super rake, but even this heroic tool is not enough to budge them.

Put the nozzle of the blower a few inches off the ground, how- ever, anu it will dislodge even the

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most stubborn of them in the blink of an eye.

Speaking of eyes; be careful you don't crank that pappy up to full throttle. The wind speed near the mouth of the nozzle can get higher than those found in hur- ricanes Andrew and Iniki.

Even at low speeds, eye protec- tion is a must — to say nothing of the potential damage to your lawns and nearby plants.

Please remember the times we live in. The days of wasting the potentials that lie within all those leaves have gone up in smoke, lit- erally speaking.

As | have said in the past, I figure one good compost pile in ‘the garden should produce at least one hundred dollars’ worth of soil amendments and fertilizers a year.

Your local municipality is even trying to help you by offering low-cost composting bins. Call Al (better known as King Compost or the Regal Rotter) at the North Shore Recycling Program. Their number is 984-9730.

Every good gardener knows that an abundant harvest of leaves put to proper use this year will pro- duce another abundant harvest of leaves next year.

If you don’t get with the pro- gram, you could find yourself to be an out-of-work gardener.

Friday, Seprember 25, 1992 — North Shore News - - 13

LAST FALL’S warm temperatures enabled David Lund to do the chores in shorts while 22-year-old neighbor Nick Boyd played among the leaves. This year it looks like snorkels and gumboots will be de rigueur.

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