As I write this it’s barely above 40 degrees, and the eager beavers are out there blowing the winter layer of leaf mold, street grit and calcified dog poop sky high with their gas-powered cyclone machines. Bumblebees, beetles and birdsong be damned, the yard needs a full Brazilian.
I get it. I’m itching to get out there and tidy up. But even raking at this time of year is destructive to the sleepyheads in the soil. So, sweep your walkways and patios, but resist the urge to purge the lawn and flower beds until temps are consistently above 50 degrees.
Hill & Lake Press readers may recall that I’ve written about gas-powered leaf blowers before, and that we had formed a committee to pass an ordinance to prohibit their use in the City of Minneapolis.
This is a (lack of) progress report.
Municipalities from Honolulu to Southampton have enacted restrictions on gas-powered lawn equipment, ranging from outright bans to forbidding their sale to financial incentives for people and businesses who switch to cleaner, quieter electric equipment. Minneapolis has chosen to go with the incentive approach.
In the last year, several City Council members we spoke with expressed little interest in working on an outright ban, pointing out the burden it would put on small businesses, often BIPOC owned, and the inability to enforce it. Because of that, they said, chances of passage were slim.
They felt that the City’s Green Cost Share rebate program, managed by the Minneapolis Department of Health, was a better approach, with a goal of phasing out gas-powered lawn tools over the next five years. They pointed out that several landscaping companies have already taken advantage of that program.
Given the state of our planet I know we should persist. But given the state of our nation, I know there are far more urgent issues. And given the state of my age, I know there are other ways to spend what’s left of my one wild and precious life.
I’ll continue to keep an eye on how the city’s carrot approach is working, but I hope that someone with more snap in their bean will take up the stick. There is no excuse, knowing what we know about these shrieking purveyors of pollutants, to allow them to continue to destroy our peace, our health and our planet.
