Leaf pick up/fall clean up

Dan

Dan

Staff
Fall clean up is a major task here at El rancho del Poko. We must have 20+ trees. Plus trees bordering the property. The co. that does the next door neighbor's keeps yelling at me that for the low, low price of $300 a pop, (they want to do it 3 times!) they will do it for me. LOL, bump that!

So I normally use a ridding mower like a blower & and a push blower to round the leaves (leaf, leave, leaves, %^$^$# English!) in to rows and then rake em on to tarps. Then tow the tarp to a wooded area to dump. It takes 2 people about a week all totaled and just plain sux.

So I whip out my handy dandy laptop and google it. Found a way to make a collection bag out of a tarp that attaches to the out chute of the lawn tractor. Only problem is unmulched, fills up every 3 and a half minutes. Link below

So I buy a $50 mulch kit for the ridding mower. Works great. But not having made that bag thing yet, I use a lawn sweeper that tows behind the ridding mower. ($300. Link below)

Takes just a little longer then mowing grass, works like a charm and cost less than 40% of what those landscapers wanted to do one pass. That and we now have the tools for next year.

I am not counting the cost of the mower as we use that for grass and towing a work trailer for heavy stuff, around the yard

Bag collector; http://www.instructables.com/id/Tarp-leaf-bagging-system/?ALLSTEPS

Mulch kit. Covers out shute of mowere and blades chop up grass clippings and leaves; Fall clean up is a major task here at El rancho del Poko. We must have 20+ trees plus trees bordering the property. The co. that does the next door neighbor's keeps yelling at me that for the low, low price of $300 a pop, (they want to do it 3 times!) they will do it for me. LOL, bump that!
 
Mulch kit; http://www.lowes.com/pd_272806-6331...L=?Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&facetInfo= I paid $49.99 at Homedepot

Lawn sweeper; https://www.google.com/search?q=law...HvigK2zICAAw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAw&biw=1008&bih=591 $300

I forgot the blower. Waste of money but was how it was always done so I got no vote, lol. (It works and works well but is for some one who has lots of time and a bad back)

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Powermat...wer-PWB163150E/203515257?N=5yc1vZbxavZ1z0tgyd Paid $200 a few years back So around $550.00 total cost. So far, snork.

Still beats the heck out of working for a week just to keep dead leaves at bay.
 
Dan,

I still miss the smell of burning leaves in the fall. That and getting up early in the morning to beat all the other kids to the horse chestnuts that had fallen from the few trees that were left.

Steve.
 
It's funny you should mention that Steve. After doing leaves to day I had a little fire just to sit and stare at and was thinking about that smell. As a kid, being the one to lite it was this great and cool thing.
 
Dan,

I would have had to gather up a bag of leaves and put them on the fire so I could sit there and relive those boyhood memories if only for a short while. Scrunching up some sheets out of the newspaper and and pushing them under the leaves so they would burn easier to get the fire going was indeed an honor that our Dad let my brother and I do but the lighting of them was left to himself.

A wise man was my Dad.

Steve.
 
Thanks for a heart warming mental image Steve. I bet Your Dad was, Buddy. Apple don't fall far from the tree. (unless your in my family. Than it gets thrown, LOL)


Was thinking about your post early this morning over coffee and while watching the furnace leaking oil and belching torrents of smoke. I hate the thing. It was bought in the 1960s, is a Piece Of Stuff and looks like the outside was designed by the guy who drew the "Jettsons" cartoon. But I digress.


While considering that bill, the forum and your post, I thought of a title for your autobiography. (I dunno how to spell "memwares" and the spell-check error message I keep getting is basically "WTF?, over)

"Follow that car!" (and then he didn't charge me)

Was way funnier this morning.... .duh.
 
OH! and forgt.

We did the leaves in the yard using the new and soon to be famous CarDan method. AKA "Mowlching" and was done in less then 4 hrs. Works great!

(Years back we had a drain cleaning co. named "Cardan" Carol & dan)
 
You should do what my neighbor does, it works great for him. He waits til I go in or leave and then he blows them all in my yard..he thinks I don't know. What a tool!
 
Dan,

I miss the days when we raked up the leaves. Here we are surrounded by 60' to 80' cedar and fir trees. They shed but it isn't the same as leaves.

Follow that car. Now I'm laughing like mad. Thank you for reminding me and it's funny tonight as well.

To those who are wondering what we're talking about here's the story.

I'm a voracious reader of books and I bought most of them from one book store in downtown Vancouver B.C. in the early 1980's. Since I was in there so often I became good friends with the people who worked there and one of them was going to N.Y. City with friends.
When he got back he told me this story. They had been out one night drinking and having supper and as they were window shopping they were discussing where to go and what to see next. He sees something in a store window and stands there looking at it for a while and then looks up just in time to see the last of his friends climbing into a cab and they drive off.

He looks around, sees a cab driving by and flags it down, climbs in and says "Follow that car." pointing to the cab the that is now disappearing down the street into the traffic. After a considerable chase his friends get to where they are going and as they are getting out they look up just to see their friend getting out of the cab that has just pulled in behind them. They keep looking at him and then back into the cab they had just gotten out of as if he'd just pulled off some feat of magic since they expect he's in the cab with them. Did I mention they were drinking?

He ducks back into the cab to pay the driver and the guy says you don't owe me anything. I've been driving cab for twenty years and I've been waiting for someone to say "Follow that car", just like in the movies. Thank you, and the rides on me.

Steve.
 
har! snicker. Was 3/4 through that and thinking "ayup, he is hiding the drinking part"

Ya really gotta start writing.
 
Dan,

It really helps the story if you knew the participant that I did as well as his fellow employees. I'm sure when the book shop close for the night they adjourned to the pub a few door up until it closed.
A really great time to live in Vancouver.

Yes, I'm thinking more about putting it all down on paper so the following generation will know what I saw and they will never see.

Steve.
 
Ya kinda gave the Readers Digest version there, didn't ya, BuckWheat. Snork

Ya really should get it down, Steve. There is a program that comes free with any Windows PC called "Voice Recognition" Ya have to train it and it still will get lots of words confused but you can sit and tell it stories and it types for you. Can also operate your computer and any thing the computer controls. Really cool ~stuff~

This is for Windows 7 & 8 but they are all similar and you can also download it free from Microsoft; http://www.howtogeek.com/177539/how-to-get-started-with-speech-recognition-on-windows-7-or-8/

Just an option, Buddy


Honestly, I have no room. Been writing a play and a novella for 10 years. So far have soiled exactly 3 pcs of paper and about 400 keystrokes.
 
Thanks Dan,

I'll look at the voice recognition. I'd heard of it and often wondered how well it worked.

Readers Digest version? I would have posted the original story if I knew where it was on the forum. Feel free to if you do. I would have given anything to have seen the look on his face as he realized they were leaving and he had absolutely no idea just where they were going.

Steve.
 
The VR thing works amazingly well. You "teach" it your voice patterns by reading what it tells you to read. So if you couldn't say the "TH" sound and it had you read, say, The rain In spain falls mainly on The Plain" How ever you said "The" it would know to type it as intended.
LOL, I had a sort of lysp and know this. A cruel word as folks with one, can't say it's title. I said it as "Lythp" I was fun to talk to. Took 2 yrs of work to say "grass" correctly

But is fun to play with. "Open motorbikes forum or email, paint what ever and it happens without mouse clicks or typing.

Each person who uses it has to train it to work with their speech patterns and pronunciation but works out of the box but gets some wrong. Might typ "Sheep" when you said "Sleep" and such.
 
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