My cousin Amy is here to party this week. Of course by party I mean join me at an OB appointment to help keep my toddler out of the bio-hazard bin and help blow leaves in the front lawn. Everything on our original agenda has been put on hiatus by the government shut-down, so we’re going with the flow this week. When I brought her home from the airport yesterday, this was sitting by the front door:
That, my friends, is the Toro 51609 12-Amp Variable Speed Electric Blower/Vacuum with Metal Impeller. I bought it on Amazon for $70. It’s electric rather than gas powered, so we do have the annoyance of an extension cord to contend with, but it’s much friendlier to the environment.
I have never actually used a blower before, so I was pretty psyched for this to arrive. We have a ton of trees on our property and the leaves were getting pretty ugly.
It was very easy to use, although my skirt kept getting sucked into the fan-I would recommend pants. I was too excited to change when it arrived a day earlier than expected, though. The blower was lightweight and easy to carry as I swept in a side to side motion across the lawn. I couldn’t figure out how to get the leaves blown into a pile, they were going everywhere, but they all stuck to the edge of the driveway, so I vacuumed them from there.
The photo above is with the vacuum attachment. It came with a bag that didn’t look like it was going to hold anything, but the motor is a metal impeller, so once the leaves are sucked up they go through the metal blades and get chopped into tiny pieces:
I did the entire front lawn without having to empty the bag. It was actually kind of fun. Not like, shopping-without-your-kids-fun, but fun in the way that any home project with instant results is fun. The lawn looked 100% better after I finished. These pictures have made me realize that I need to increase the frequency of my hair appointments while pregnant, things are getting a little out of control. There’s nothing like editing a dozen photos of yourself doing lawn work to make you realize just how bad of a hair day you’re having.
Manual labor aside, we are having a great time with Amy in town. She taught Izzy to swim last night, something we’ve been working on for the better part of five years:
And she takes amazing photos:
With every monument and museum shut down in DC, we are on a week-long food-crawl, eating our way through the city. Today we hit up Dean and Deluca:
Followed by Georgetown Cupcake:
Their carrot-cake is out of this world. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? I doubt it can top today, but I’m looking forward to trying.
Tags : blower, exterior, landscaping, lawn, toro blower vacuum
