Brrrr... It's a tad on the cold side right now isn't it? I know I was tempting fate by anticipating wind this weekend, but I didn't necessarily need, or want, the cold weather to accompany it. But at least it was dry. And the skies were blue. But still it was cold. My two concrete hares in the garden looked as if they were quite enjoying their blanket of leaves, but we were keen to get the leaves off of the slate.

There was also a pile of leaves gathering along the fence, and while the euphorbias (and weeds) are valiantly doing there best to grow through the leaves, I'm not sure they're doing the patio much good. That really eaten and and almost lacy set of leaves belong to a weed, with no doubt a huge tap root. I'm not sure what's eating it, but it's having a pretty good go isn't it?

Leaves accumulating in corners of our garden

But first, leaf duties

Wellies on, gloves on, blower at the ready and I was set. I was expecting my new Stihl BGA 56 Blower to be quiet, but I wasn't expecting quite so much power from this lightweight and relatively small garden tool.

Getting to grips with the Stihl leaf blower

My plan was to blow the leaves into orderly piles, and that generally worked, but the grass also got a bit of a blow and it gave the impression that it was clinging on for dear life. All the grass stayed in place, of course, but it was noticeably moved.

Neatly and quietly choralled into a pile

Once the leaves were in piles, they were quickly bagged and set aside to do their thing, and provide fantastic leaf mould in a year or two. Where this blower will come in handy will be retrieving leaves from our flower beds, as you can see from the photo below I've been giving the leaves fair warning!

A new and welcome tool in our garden - the Stihl BG56 leafblower

It was still chilly though out there - the joys of having a north facing garden - even though we were wrapped up and with glimpses of sun there were only short bursts of work. We've still leaves to collect - mostly in the flowerbeds now. If the snow takes hold as the forecasters would have us believe, they might have another week's grace.

But parts of the garden are looking much less leaf covered, and smarter for it too. We know there's little chance of us capturing every single leaf in the garden, so it'll be a bit of an ongoing project. But one that's a whole lot more fun - and productive - than doing it by hand!

* This is a collaborative post, but all views and opinions are my own.