Tis' the season.

Well my friends, it's begun.
That season that only exists where rich people who have lawn service live.

Leaf Blower Whining Season.

I am not yet able to afford to live in such a neighborhood and when I am, I will boycott my WASP-y neighbors by having the Addams Family house. I do love the Addams Family, but mostly, I would just want to piss of all the pickle-in-their-ass Protestant lawyers who live in my neighborhood.

I do happen to work in one of these richy bitchy neighborhoods at a beautiful house, in a corner office with huge windows and a gorgeous view of every one's meticulously preened yards and landscaping. The most anal retentively manicured yardscape in the neighborhood is of the couple whose house backs up to the house I work in and my many office windows overlook it. Very pleasing to the eye, but horrible on my aural senses and brain stem.

I started to get nervous on Tuesday, when I saw the ChemLawn guy spread fertilizer all over the yard (is having a green, weed free lawn really worth destroying our water supply over? I guess that's a whole other blog entry). He was clad in the uniform tall rubber boots, moving as only one exposed to concentrated amounts of toxic chemicals over a long period of time can. But it wasn't his gait that got me concerned, it was his purpose. He was trying to make the grass grow, which meant that other people would soon come to cut it which is always followed by the most abhorrent of all the lazy person's power tools: The leaf blower. Or, as I call it, the fucking leaf blower.

Sure enough, the season indeed commenced today. Since it's 46 degrees with a chilly breeze outside, the lawn crew landed in the anal retentive neighbor's yard with thick jackets (one step down from a parka) and commenced the mowing, followed by the fucking leaf blower. This sound will echo through the neighborhood, just about every day, for the next five months.

Most of the neighbors aren't home at this time of day. They are at work being doctors and lawyers and high powered sales people. Some of their wives are home during the day, I see them walking around the neighborhood at a ferocious pace, pushing the infant SUV stroller, or walking the little yippee dog, trying to get those last stubborn pounds off their scrawny frame. Never a smile or a hello when I see them outside, cause they are way too good to be talking to the girl in her red Converse One Stars with the punkitty rock hair. But these women seem immune to the incessant wail of the leaf blower that consumes the neighborhood. Like it's just part of the natural setting of where they live. That sound, just like Chanel, Conde Nast, and themselves, belonged in a neighborhood such as this.

As a person who doesn't live in such a neighborhood, I find this sound not only irritating but symbolic for many vile things. I, who had to pay the city I live in $250 dollars last summer because I let my grass/weeds get so long that the city sent people to cut it for me, live in a neighborhood of do it yourself lawn mowers. Every weekend morning, starting at about 10am (unless you're the asshole who lives two doors down, then you are mowing at 6:30am on a SATURDAY) there is the glottal grumble of the lawn mower heard throughout the neighborhood. The sound of people who tend to their own property, who, regardless if they want to or not, don't have a lawn crew. This sound is a homier sound to me. It's the sound of people out in their yards, saying hello over the fence, inviting each other to the porch for a Bell's Amber while their dogs rip around they yard together, making plans for a neighborhood block party. The sound of community. You don't hear many fucking leaf blowers in my neighborhood. If there's some grass on the sidewalk or covering the mulch where the flowers grow, who cares? Let's go have a barbecue.

The sound of the leaf blower is cold, unfriendly, passive aggressive and competitive. It's the sound that masks reality. I sit in my office and listen to that incessant howl, all day long, ringing throughout the neighborhood, but if I drive through at night, not a peep. It's placid, serene and frighteningly perfect. During the day, I see the lawn crews working to make everything flawless and sculpted, so when everyone arrives home at night, it's just like the grass lowered itself on it's own and the weeds pulled themselves out from the flower beds and wandered off into the garbage bags hidden behind the garage until trash day when the housekeeper takes it out to the curb. No one had to fuss with a lawn mower of their own or those pesky lawn and leaf bags, no one had to make small talk with the neighbors, no one had to worry about their $1200 pedigree Portuguese Water Dog messing with the mangy Spaniel down the street. They can continue to be exclusive and choosy with who and what gets their precious time.

Me, I like my neighbors. Even though Sarge to the south of me is kind of a dummy who regularly does stupid DIY projects, and it's a miracle that he hasn't blown up his garage, lost a limb or downed wires. Or the house to the north of me that has a rabble of renters who rarely take out the trash and leave it outside the back door for weeks on end. Or me, for that matter, the lady with the unfinished flower bed in the front yard, rusty gutters and the kitten shredded curtains that hang in the big picture window in my front room. But I'll invite these people over for a beer on the front porch, watch their dog for the afternoon, or keep an eye on their place when they are out of town. I'll definitely take that over a well kept lawn any old day.