Hedge trimmers, mowers and dodgy leaf blowers
6th October, 2007
|
The sun shone brightly on a glorious morning and the low roar of lawnmowers shattered the Sunday peace. "Gardening," declared my wife as I eyed the couch in the living room and pondered for just a moment the possibility of having a nice mid-morning lie down. It was not to be and moments later a mechanical clatter announced that she had begun to trim the hedges using a device that resembled a very large electric knife and one which I had been banned, unreasonably in my view, from using.
In my family, the yard was a domain in which males ruled supreme. Women were permitted to weed gardens and undertake other menial chores but anything that involved cutting, slashing or chopping was men's business. Thus her flat refusal to allow me to use the hedge trimmer provoked a free and frank exchange of views. "I asked you to use your electric drill to put one tiny hook in the ceiling and we ended up with a hole the size of a family pizza," she shrilled. "The carnage you could inflict with an electric hedge trimmer does not bear contemplation. They could make a movie, The Brisbane Chainsaw Massacre." I thought this to be a rather harsh judgement. She was right about the unfortunate hook-in-the-ceiling incident but how was I supposed to know plaster ceilings were so delicate? It is also true that I have never felt comfortable with electric saws. I once hired a chainsaw to trim some trees and was so intimidated by its potential for dismemberment that I put it aside after five minutes and the trees remained untrimmed. The hedge trimmer, however, was all about male pride so I voiced my disapproval and suggested the only reason she didn't want me to use it was that she feared I'd trim the hedges better than she could. I also reminded her that she was the one who had cut the trimmer's power cord in half ever so neatly not so long ago. This struck a nerve and we indulged in that time-honoured suburban tradition, the weekend "domestic", trading colourful expletives until we had each exhausted our vocabulary of four-letter words. She then stormed off with her trimmer and I retreated to the mower, one of the few implements I was permitted to use. I had not, however, been specifically banned from using the sucker-blower, a sort of backyard vacuum cleaner that sucked up leaves and grass clippings or blew them off pathways with a blast of fan-generated air. I had watched our neighbour use this machine and, given my boy-like fascination with anything possessed of an on-off switch, hankered to get one of my own. So I mowed and when I'd finished, gleefully grabbed the sucker-blower from the garage, took it around the back of the house and plugged it into the power supply. With the rat-tat-tat clatter of the hedge trimmer confirming she was still occupied, I flicked the "on" switch. Woo hoo! This was fun. Point it in the general direction of a pile of leaves and "thhhrrrrup!" - they'd disappear into its maw. Within minutes the lawn resembled a freshly vacuumed carpet but the large paved area was now covered in grass and leaves. It was time to switch to blower mode, so I reversed the suction action and again hit go. As it turned out, blowing was a lot different to sucking and I seriously underestimated the power of the force nine gale the machine generated. It's possible I might have become a little carried away as I swept the sucker-blower through a 270-degree arc. A tornado of dust, grass and leaves suddenly swirled in the air and blasted against the back wall of the house. Not a wall, actually, but a large glass area - windows, I think you call them. Fate dictated that on this day, the windows would be open and that standing in the kitchen, leaves now decorating her hair and her face coated in a thick layer of dust, was my wife. The sucker-blower is now also on the banned list. |
