Lud and his Blowing Machine

Volunteering day at Weston Park.  Gardening at this time of year is all about leaves!  The morning was spent on Dairy Green, raking up the leaves into piles for later collection.  We estimated the area was about 1/4 of an acre and it took three of us, 90 minutes to complete the task.

In the afternoon we were tasked with raking up the sweet chestnut leaves from the rear lawn.  Again we started with rakes only for Lud to roll out his secret weapon, The Little Wonder, High Output, Power Blower. Well it was a revelation shifting the leaves in seconds while the manual method would have taken many minutes to clear the same area (and not as well).  We probably cleared the area in 20% of the time the manual method would have required.

I did, looking at my blisters, ask innocently why we couldn't have used it this morning, but apparently the grass was too long and wet!  We still had to revert to rakes for some of the work but I'm hopeful that next week's gardening might be able to take advantage of mechanisation.