Our Olde House: May 2025
It works! I made a blow-the-leaves-out-of-the-gutter Snoot for my leaf blower out of some downspout parts that I put together. I made two GutterSnoots actually, one with a short extension that fits into the lower front gutter, and the other one, reversible to blow left or right, with a tapered extension that fits into all the other gutters. I did have to use little screws to keep the pieces from coming apart during use. I attached the shoulder strap from my tool bag to the leaf blower so it is much easier to carry. Now the greatest force I have to compensate for is the pretty strong sideways push caused when the blower is on high speed.
I needed about eight feet of downspout to reach the roof, and I used aluminum instead of plastic because the aluminum is lighter. Also, I was able to squish the aluminum to make it fit into the gutter opening. While the gutters are four inches wide, the overhang by the roof shingles make the gutters only two inches wide. My favorite part was cutting the aluminum downspout with a hack saw, which sounded like chalk on a blackboard. In high school I would ‘accidentally’ screech the chalk on the blackboard if a teacher asked me to write something on the board, which I told them beforehand that I did not want to do. I was never asked to go up to the board twice by any one teacher, but some years this process was repeated for the education of a few teachers who wanted to cure me of my supposed fear of standing in front of the class.
The first time I used the GutterSnoot the leaves and tassels were wet, but the leaf blower still managed to remove about 90% of them. Later when everything had dried out and I cleaned the gutters ‘just for fun’, they were blown out as clean as new gutters. My other think was definitely worth taking in this case, and I am very grateful to Miss Sherry for encouraging me to think outside the ladder. I must admit that when Miss Sherry first placed me on ladder probation, I was not especially fond of the admonition. I did not look at it as punishment, per se, but I do have that male defect of not liking to be told what not to do.
The gutter on top of the port-a-cache’ that directs the runoff from the front of the house to the back edge of the roof is still clogged with leaves because I cannot reach this with my GutterSnoot. I sent my drone up to see why the water was going over the gutter instead of out the side, and I could see the leaves piled up in the last three feet of gutter. I thought I could use the downdraft from my drone to blow out this gutter by flying it directly over the clog, but the drone downdraft is not strong enough to remove the leaves.
I even cut a branch off of a tree next to this gutter to keep my drone from crashing into it while I was trying to clean the gutter. I was able to cut the branch from the ground, without a ladder, and without breaking anything the branch fell on. The branch did bring down the rain chain which was attached to the end of this gutter; the good news was that the rain chain was not damaged, the bad news is that the rain chain was causing the gutter to clog because the leaves get stuck in it before falling.
I can walk short distances now on my recovering foot, so I am able to do some yardwork. I managed to mow the lawns a couple of times and use my line trimmer around the edges of the front and back lawns. Miss Sherry and I also spent a good chunk of our time pulling out what she calls vetch – the velcro like weeds in the front and back yards.
Coming attractions would be the need to start cutting all of the little trees and big weeds in the yard, and eventually feeding them into my chipper. My foot is not quite ready for this task. I went back to the bone doctor for a follow-up xray and it showed that the broken bone had grown back 75%. It has been four months since the ladder incident, so I guess it will take about year for my foot to heal completely.
Miss Sherry and Fuzzy are playing a game that we are guessing is the cat version of fetch. This has been going on for a few months, and it seems simple enough, but Fuzzy does get very grumpy about the game sometimes like we are not playing it correctly. Fuzzy has a canvas rat that sometime during the night she places on the bathroom rug. Miss Sherry will toss it back out into the hall when she finds it, where it usually stays until the next night.
Some nights Fuzzy will wake up Miss Sherry and want her to throw the rat, which she does, and then Fuzzy calms down. We have no idea what the rush to throw the rat is every few weeks. Some days Fuzzy acts exasperated, or like she is making fun of us because we are not playing the game correctly. In our defense, we have never been given the rules of the game, and we are playing the best we can with the information at hand. We do not know what the score is either, assuming Fuzzy is keeping score, but we do think that eventually someone will win. Hopefully soon.
