Leaf Haters - A Dirty Topic

Though happy-inspiring topics are my first choice, this blog is a dirty topic: leaf-haters.

November has always been my favorite month in Atlanta.

Year after year, Buckhead’s backdrop turned into a masterful painting of different hues right before our eyes, every fall. And it stayed that way until AFTER Thanksgiving

But over the last several years that painting has become a filthy cloud of dust and exhaust pollution.

Gone are Atlanta Novembers of quietly falling leaves? The cyclical pattern that only God himself could create has become a war-zone of ethnic-leaf cleansing.

Beautiful leaves that blanket and insulate their fellow, ancient inhabitants for the next season are getting brutally murdered by leaf-haters armed with gas-powered blowers.

Did you know that fallen leaves fertilize? Or that they otherwise decompose independent of human intervention? Who knew we could leave leaves alone and they’d magically take care of themselves and help the eco-system while they were at it?

If you live in Atlanta you probably didn’t know this because everywhere you look leaf-haters are exterminating leaves and other foliage and the community accepts this as normal?

We are all complicit in the genocide of leaves by leaf-blowers. And when leaves aren’t in abundance, the genocide continues…of whatever is on the earth. Leaf blowers fire up their weapons year-round in Atlanta. They get paid to make noise and exterminate clean air, if nothing else.

Atlanta is a hot mess of gas-powered blowers. Do you like gas powered blowers?  Are you a leaf-hater (what is so ugly about leaves?)?  Would you consider paying your yard service to do something else?  Tidying up leaves with an electric blower or a ________ rake?  Would you consider asking your yard service to aim and fire their cancer-causing machines less?  Once a month?  Twice a season?

Recently, the International School near our home had leaves hastily blown by three militant-looking leaf-haters. The bank from which the leaves were murdered is one that is never walked on, used or otherwise noticed by anyone. Inconspicuous nothingness.

Empty, dry bank now.

Same bank, different angle

All the hated leaves are gone. No more November for that patch of earth.

Here are the leaves now. They were slowly murdered for 45 minutes and left dirty and polluted on the other side of the road.

Are you a leaf-hater? Do you think leaves should die a slow, painful death in a cloud of benzene and formaldehyde and harm children and humans along the way? Do you prefer leaves "over there" but not "here"?

I can get out of Atlanta and take a break at the beach and I am thankful for that.  But the bugs and other natural habitats are left to die by leaf-hater genocide and/or feel naked and homeless with no one to advocate for them.

Is that fair? 

There’s a lot to be sad about regarding how humans are destroying quality of life without a leaf-hater elephant in the room.

Is it a decent idea for those who hire leaf-killers and clean-air destroyers to limit how often they pay the murderers to attack?

Make November Great Again in Atlanta!

Thank you for reading!

Love, Shelley

No leaves to pass by for Thanksgiving guests in this building.

Segregated leaves in the middle triangle.