MUNGO EATS Latin America

I love where I live for many reasons.  I like the central location, the proximity to the river, etc.  One of my favourite things about my neighbourhood is the number of large mature trees.  My yard has two huge green ash trees along the boulevard and a mountain ash in the front yard.  The backyard is home to two apple trees, an apricot tree and an ornamental crab apple tree.  Although I love these trees, they certainly contribute to the fall “work” as they drop oodles of leaves to the ground. 

I usually end up raking the leaves in three shifts.  One of the green ash trees drops it’s leaves at least 2 weeks before it’s friend, and the backyard trees drop their leaves another 2 or 3 weeks later. 

Today it was time to do raking number one, in the front yard.  It is a big job and I usually fill at least 7-8 bags for composting.  Also, I usually end up doing this chore on my own.  The kids sometimes help a bit, but they only have interest in it as long as it takes to build a big enough pile to jump in.  They then spend their time jumping and I continue to rake and bag.  This year the interest in leaf jumping was short (only 20 minutes or so).  Sigh…they are growing up.  I did however manage to keep at least on child’s interest for the whole clean up.  Enter the TORO leaf blower/vac!  I was originally going to use the blower to move the leaves that sat on the gravel under the trees, but then Sean got a look at this new toy.  He decided leaf vacuuming was just the job for a 10 year old boy and away he went.

The blower is noisy, but it shreds the leaves, in addition to sucking them up, so we ended up with only 5 bags of leaves (so far!).  I must say, I felt a little like Tom Sawyer, as I mostly sat on the deck and watched my boy do my work for me.  I would only spring into action when the catch bag needed emptying.  What could I do?…he certainly was having fun!

Boys and their toys!