It Sucks!

*One Sweet Sucker found in Aunt Alice's garage before she passed.
I was the only one interested in giving it a home.

A working girl needs friends.  I've got quite a few--talkin' tools here.  My closest collection of good buddies include the staple gun and zip ties.  One powerful sucker of a tool is up for nomination to the inner circle.  Indeed, it was this piece of equipment that inspired my very first blog posting about vacuuming out the gutters. May I present my ancient Craftman(woman) Variable Speed Power Blower.*

A Curly Black Locust grows up to the sky near our back patio, and from nearly its first spring sprout of green, it begins to shed dozens of golden petal-like leaves everyday all summer long.  Never complain about raking leaves in the fall--you could end up doing it all summer as well.  Here's where my great and dear friend the blower earns his keep.  Everyday from June until all the trees are stark naked in the Autumn rains, Things I get do today include blowing the leaves off the patio (which keeps them off the bottom of our shoes, and therefore, out of our house).  I am so grateful.

The latest demonstration of dear friendship from this tool came last week.  The hen coop was cleaned (finally).  Fresh straw was spread deeply on the floor.  After the job was complete, I remembered that I had been using chopped straw.  It's finer, fluffier, goes farther and is not stiff like little sticks the way regular straw is.  But I had borrowed the neighbor's electric mini leaf-grinder to create a huge sack of the chopped variety, and that supply was now gone.  I had never tried using my blower to suck and grind before, at least not straw.  For some reason I doubted its strength for such a task.

But now there's a giant bag stuffed tight with chopped straw, great mouthfuls whizzed up with the sucker end of this mighty blower.  Oh, me of little faith!