November 24, 2012 - Leaf Dilemma Solved!

After I blogged about all the leaves my neighbor had left for my garden (November 8, 2012 - Ask and Ye Shall Receive), and how I was trying to get them chopped up with the mower and dug into the garden (November 17, 2012 - John Digs Autumn Leaves), Spiderjohn left the following comment:

"Granny, you should get a leaf blower/vacuum/mulcher. I think mine was about $40 from Lowe's. I've had it about 5 years and wouldn't be without it. So much better than a lawnmower with a mulching blade. And, much quicker. Turns 10 bags of leaves into maybe 1 bag. I use the leaves in my compost tumbler and in my beds. They decompose so much faster when they are really mulched up fine!"

To which I replied:

Spiderjohn, I hate to tell you I have one, but Mr. Granny said it was a pain to put the leaf catcher on and now he doesn't know what he did with the attachments. I bought it (from Sears) on sale at a time when we didn't need it for leaves, so by the time I did need it he'd already lost the part(s?)and the directions!

Well, Spiderjohn, I'm happy to say Mr. Granny and I went out to the garage and dug around until we found all the parts and the directions.   Mr. Granny scratched his head a bit, and finally said he'd try to get it figured out........."But not today".

I told son John about it at dinner on Thursday, so he promised he'd come over after work on Friday and get it put together.  After he got here, it probably took him all of ten minutes to get it done.



We tried it out on the leaves that had blown in on the patio.  It sucked them up really fast, mulched them fine, and threw them all over the patio.  Then we closed the zipper on the bag and started over.  LOL!

It rained Friday night, so I was hesitant to try it out on the leaves in the yard.  I decided to give it a try anyway, and with Mr. Granny standing by to help, I sucked up enough leaves to fill a large garbage can twice.  


Leaves had blown up against the gate, nearly three feet deep.  I sucked up all of those, then went down the hedge and along the house for as far as the extension cord would reach.


The leaves were thick along the back of the house.  Eventually I'll go back with the leaf blower and corral the remaining leaves into a smaller area.


If I'd raked and bagged all of those leaves, that would easily have been 8-10 bags.  Instead, I ended up with.................


 The old black compost barrel, barely half filled with beautifully shredded leaves.  
Thanks for that kick in the rear, Spiderjohn!



Black Friday

I did it.  I went shopping on Black Friday.  Normally I wouldn't even attempt it, and I certainly wouldn't camp out or even wander out at midnight, but Costco didn't even open until 9:00 AM, and I really wanted one of these.....................



Daughter Amy came for coffee at 8, then we headed for Costco at 8:30.  Quantities being limited to stock on hand, I didn't want to take a chance and miss out on a good buy.  I really didn't think there would be that many people there, as their "Black Friday" specials were actually on sale for three days, but the line ran all the way from the front entrance out to the street!  It was cold and windy, and we really didn't want to stand in line, so we decided to sit in the car and wait for the line to move.  Once the doors opened, the people began moving in really fast, so we walked over and got a cart, and within a couple of minutes we were in the store.  We headed straight for the small appliances, grabbed the processor, went to the checkout where only one person was in front of us, and we were back out in the car and heading home in about ten minutes total!


 And here it is!  Well, part of it.  


 Here's the rest of it.  I've been putting it to good use!


 Right after I brought it home, I made a loaf of bread for hot turkey sandwiches for dinner.  Then we had toast for breakfast this morning, and the loaf is already more than half gone.  I love using the processor for bread dough, the loaves seem to rise much nicer and the crumb is finer than when I use the dough setting on the bread machine.


This morning I whipped up a batch of pizza dough.  This is a recipe that calls for refrigerating the dough for 3-5 days, so I'll have to let you know how it turns out.

By going to Costco rather than ordering on line, I saved $10.99 shipping charges, and I got a nice Costco cookbook to boot!



A free 240 page cookbook!



24 comments:

  1. I so hate leaf blowers (asthma and they kick up all the allergens), but I could really get into a leaves sucker. Now that would be nice.

    I stayed home on Black Friday. I used to shop then when I had kids and had to buy shoes, clothes, coats and stuff every year. But with just me and hubby there is no way I'm going to brave the stores. They scare me :0. I do like Costco though. I have a friend I take occasionally and she gets freaked out by just normal Costco.

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    1. Daphne, Costco wasn't nearly as busy as it always is when I shop on regular days. It just looked like a lot of people, having them lined up and waiting. We didn't even have a problem finding a nearby parking spot.

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  2. Nice job, Granny! I was up at 2:55 to head in for the sales. At the first stop, we entered, got what we wanted, got to the checkout line, started checking out, and.....the electricity went out, For and hour! Still managed to get all but one item on my list that morning. And was home by 6:45, with breakfast.

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    1. You're a better man than I am, Langela! No way would I go out in the middle of the night to shop. Of course it's getting so "Black Friday" begins as "Gray Thursday" in many stores now. I am looking forward to Cyber Monday. I already picked up a couple of bargains on Amazon.com, one being my Christmas present from Mr. Granny :-)

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  3. I too have a leaf blower and it does shred the leave perfectly. Unfortunately, the zipper to the bag has broken so I haven't used it for shredding for a few years. It is still useful for blowing leaves into a pile though.

    Congratulations on your Black Friday deal on the Cuisinart. I have a mini Cuisinart and love it. I don't have any desire to shop in stores Black Fridays. In my early 20s I worked at a retail store in the mall. I blame that for my aversion to shopping Black Fridays. LOL!

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    1. Rachel, I have a light weight leaf blower that I use, Mr. Granny always used the blower/vacuum just as a blower. It's rather heavy for me, but now that we've done the conversion to vac, it's worth the struggle to get the leaves chopped. Now we can use the lightweight one just for blowing, and the heavy one for shredding. We had two of everything after selling the AZ property, LOL!

      My 20-something year old Cuisinart broke a few years ago, and I bought a cheap processor. It wasn't heavy duty enough for doing much more than a bit of chopping or shredding. I love having the new workhorse Cuisinart, it should outlive me!

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  4. OOOOOHHHH! The leaf vaccum succker thingy.
    I had to call my son in as our who yard is about 3 inches deep in leaves. I looked at lows and they have one for $65. Im thinking im going to get one.

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    1. Carrie, I sucked up another batch today and I'm going to dump it on my next year's lettuce bed and dig it all in a bit. I'm actually wondering if I'll have enough leaves for all the mulch I want them for next year! My leaves all come from the neighbor's trees, and she was out bagging them up again today. I might actually go rescue them before the garbage man picks them up ;-) I hope I don't wear out that leaf sucker!

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  5. granny, you didn't need to buy a food processor. you can use mine when you move in here to cook for us. (i even have a spare because i couldn't resist a $15 food processor at a yard sale)

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    1. LOL, Donna, you should have told me that before I bought it! Actually, I could have probably just used the Hamilton Beach that I already had, but it just didn't compare to a Cuisinart. That is if they are still built as well as the one that served me so well for over 20 years.

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    2. Don't you just love appliances that LAST? I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer that I got for my wedding 28 years ago. It works as well as it did back then. Sadly my mini Cuisinart had a crack in the plastic holding the blade after just a year. I decided to replace it with a Black & Decker as it also got good reviews. But the Black & Decker just doesn't have the power as the tiny Cuisinart, so I replaced the blade. Now I have two mini processors sitting on my counter.

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    3. Daphne, if this lasts half as long as the old Cuisinart did, I'll be happy. If it lasts as long, it will probably outlive me!

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  6. Nice job on those leaves! I have the tiny Cuininart just like that one!

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    1. Erin, I might have to gift myself with a small one, too. Sometimes the big one is overkill.

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  7. Love the leaf blower/sucker, it does work wonders. But with both of me trees now gone... I don't use it nearly as much. I hate the noise, but wear ear protection.

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    1. David, I don't have any deciduous trees left either, but I get a ton of leaves blowing over from the neighbor's. The blowers really are noisy, but do a great job.

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  8. Glad you got your's going! I don't know how many times I have left the bag unzipped!!

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    1. Spiderjohn, now will you make it warmer outside so I can use the leaf sucker? Brrrrr!

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  9. I did not know there was such as thing as a leaf sucker! We've been borrowing our neighbors' leaf blower to tackle the piles on our porch and boy is it a godsend. Are the two power tools completely different things or is there a 'blow-to suck' switch that I can activate that would do both? So glad you found a solution!

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  10. HGTVMallory, it comes as one machine, blow and vac. The parts (tubes, inlet restrictor, bag) need to be switched to change between blower and vacuum, which we find to be a bit of a pain. We happened to have another plain leaf blower, so we're using the convertible one strictly as a leaf vacuum.

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  11. Thank you for the information on the leaf blower/vacuum/shredder. We had one and didn't even know it did all that - even though it says 3 in 1 right on the box. My husband did our entire front yard the other morning in about 40 minutes and ended up with one and a half bags of shredded leaves. It had rained the night before but the wet leaves were no problem. Now he needs to work on the three bags I raked last week.
    Love your blog.
    Sarah from California

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    1. I'm glad it was helpful to you, Sarah! Since I got ours working, I can't hardly wait to build a permanent bin to hold next year's shredded leaves!

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