Harvest season

On Saturday morning I went for a walk, beautiful fall day, sunny, a little chilly, and many diligent home-owners were out tidying their yards for winter. And everywhere was the whine of gas- or electric powered small engines - leaf blowers, lawn mowers, cars - even if anyone was raking by hand, all I could hear was the blowers. This morning when I was walking to work, I saw another example of man's fossil-fuel-powered ingenuity - one the university ground crew was out on a riding machine, I think it had once been a mower, now equipped for vacuming leaves - it had some duct taped hoses, and it was loud and smelly too, but it sure was sucking up those leaves.