Featured Letter: Try using a rake instead!

To the editor:

On a beautiful (finally!) spring Sunday morning, the most disturbing thing about our life, community, neighborhood is leaf blowers. 

It’s sunny, the birds are singing, its only 8:30 a.m., and the neighbors have hired a team of workers to chase the leaves around their yard. It’s so loud that I can barely think to write this. As a child, our father got us all out in the yard to rake leaves. Leaves were fun. We made piles. We jumped in them. We composted them for the garden.

Finally, it is warm enough to be outside, to open the windows, and all I can hear is the loud drone of the leaf blower.

Some communities have outlawed them. Common courtesy would say on a Sunday, maybe wait until noon. Does it even help for me to write and complain in the paper? I hope that if even one person reads this and thinks twice about using or hiring people to use leaf blowers, that would be great. Many people are in their New York city apartments while their second home’s yard is being loudly landscaped while those who live here listen to the noise.

Of all the things talked about in the paper — helicopters, winery noise/music, zoning of businesses — this is by far the most disturbing to a peaceful life. Once they start they go for hours, and when there are several my house and windows shake. Please use the rake instead! It’s also better exercise and, besides noise pollution, there is the pollution from the exhaust and kicking up lots of dirt and dust.

Enjoy the spring.

Heather Cusack, New Suffolk