On Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:15:12 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Sun, 06 Nov 2011 06:54:58 -0600, Pete Keillor
wrote:

On Sat, 05 Nov 2011 07:25:25 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Sat, 05 Nov 2011 07:36:36 -0400, Tom Gardner mars@tacks wrote:

On 11/4/2011 9:30 PM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 4 Nov 2011 12:24:16 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Nov 4, 1:05 pm, wrote:
Steve B wrote:
I need to build a vacuum with a 4" or 6" hose to pick up leaves. My smaller

snip

I removed the grass catcher from my old riding mower and am going to
modify it to fit the new one. Both are Murrays, but I'll have to add
brackets at the rear to fortify the frame bars. I think the mower will
pick up the leaves pretty well. It really blows grass. We'll see
soon.

How big is your lawn? I cut my rolling acres (8' x 10') with a line
trimmer in 3 minutes. The dogs like to poop on grass, the rest of the
courtyard is brick, gardens and river stone.

My estate is considerably larger than yours, Tawm. I have a huge
front yard and small side yard. Then there's the West 40. All in all,
my grounds take up -over- 1/3 of an acre, almost 1/3 of it is covered
in (weeds and) grass. As soon as I take out the trees in the front
yard (I've already planted an Oregon native willow there), I'll be
putting in bark and perennials, and maybe a dwarf apple tree.

The maple, birch, and sweetgum in the front yard all drop ****loads of
leaves. The small pin oak out on the West 40 isn't too bad. But the
Doug fir and coastal redwood drop all sorts of crap in the back yard,
too. Leaf detritus are a pain, but the main reason I'm taking out the
trees: I don't want tons of danger hanging over my roof at night.

Man, I'm with you there, Larry. In Michigan, we had 100'+ cottonwoods
and maples 50' from the house. I had eight smaller ones against the
house removed to let in some light, but they wanted twice as much to
remove the one big cottonwood as the total for all the others, $3500.
The biggest maple was on the front easement, forked, and showing signs
of stress. Couldn't touch it and city wouldn't.

Here in Texas, there are a few trees, but not enough to rake leaves.
The lot is 1.8 acres, with about 1 acre behind the house. That's just
a park for the dogs and deer to me, although I may stick a storage
building back there some day.

I sure don't miss big trees or raking.

Pete Keillor

Cottonwoods in Michigan? Had to have been in way south end of the state.
Snow loads would have destroyed most of them in any part of the state
north of Detroit.

I wish someone would destroy the cottonwoods around the corner from
me. Damned fuzz clogs up my AC outdoor unit every year.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada