Mown and Blown: The Problem With Leaf Blowers

October 6, 2014

...be left piled near trees, grass left where it falls after mowing and that leaf blowers not leave the truck. Any foliage that spills into streets should be raked. Leaf blowers in drought send dry earth airborne to lethal effects for asthma sufferers, particularly children and infants. Power Tools by Rubén Ortiz-Torres, 1999. Los Angeles banned gas powered leaf blowers in 1998. The ban has never been enforced. Artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres captured, pe...

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Leaf Blower Lobbyists

Mr. Homegrown

October 9, 2014

Gardening, Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...ollow up on one of Emily Green’s points in the podcast I posted yesterday. Leaf blowers do indeed have lobbyists who work out of a swanky office near Washington D.C.: the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI). If your city tries to enact a ban on leaf blowers the OPEI will orchestrate a campaign to stop the measure. I’m not against outdoor tools (chainsaws, in the right hands, are very useful). But landscapes that depend on and are shaped by ma...

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Three California Natives that Double as Culinary Herbs

Mr. Homegrown

January 16, 2017

Gardening

5 Comments

...natives and a few carefully chosen Mediterranean plants. No more petunias, leaf blowers or fake lawns either. Imagine if all our residential, government and commercial spaces had climate appropriate landscaping? Native insects, birds and other critters would explode in population. It would be a paradise. It would also be a huge culinary resource. Grow these plants in your garden and you can dodge the controversies of foraging in the wild. Towards...

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The Future is Biomorphic

Mr. Homegrown

November 4, 2014

Design

4 Comments

...much further than LEED. On a personal level we can help grow gardens in our cities. On a grass roots political level (pun intended) we can stop incentivizing AstroTurf and leaf blowers. Like Small, I hope the future is biomorphic! Thanks to Anne Hars for lending me a copy of The Futurist....

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Saturday Linkages: Speedos, Blue Eggs and the Rise of Rye

Mr. Homegrown

September 21, 2013

Saturday Linkages

1 Comment

...ses-recipes-and-permaculture … How bad for the environment are gas-powered leaf blowers? http://wapo.st/14bgqIQ In Pursuit of Tastier Chickens, a Strict Diet of Four-Star Scraps http://nyti.ms/15yN8EY Rye’s Rise: New Loaves That Are More Than a Vehicle for Pastrami http://shar.es/i9wrV Let’s get (soil) physical… https://sharepoint.cahnrs.wsu.edu/blogs/urbanhort/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=943 … The Cold War Bunker That Offered Subterranean Suburb...

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