There is no doubt about it, summer is quickly winding down. The appearance of school buses, pumpkins spice lattes, and anything Halloween is a daily reminder that autumn is here. As summer disappears, the garden and the lawn require those last few mows and clean up before the leaves cover everything.

Nothing can compete with the smell of freshly mown grass and the great workout mowing gives you. It’s like outdoor vacuuming, instant gratification of debris pick up, the yard looks clean and well defined. This is important to people like me, we are the Lawn Care Nerds.

I wear steel toed boots, protective eyewear, gloves , a towel tucked in my shorts pocket, and a red shirt as old as Methuselah. My son calls it my Lawn Care Nerd uniform.

Most importantly, I wear HEARING PROTECTION, bright orange ear plugs, in case it’s open< season on Lawn Care Nerds. Yes, I finally got smart and plugged up my ears, because while quietly sitting on the porch after mowing one day, I noticed a ringing in my ears… the mower had started to do it’s damage to my hearing.

The average lawnmower is louder than 90dB, (this includes weed whackers) and hearing damage can begin at 80dB. Not only is the lawnmower loud, it also sustains the loudness for as long as takes to mow your lawn. Noise plus time used is a hearing damage two-fer.

After the mowing is done, the leaves are about to do their drop and cover, so that means the leaf blower is back in action. Decibel levels on the leaf blower are a bit higher at 99dB. The lawn gear cacophony never ends!

Hopefully, this weekend will be the last mow of the year, and my LCN uniform will be cleaned and retired until next spring, and I’m not throwing away that red shirt. However, I’ll keep the earplugs handy because, well, loud vacuums. Yep, the vacuum, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog.

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• The Microsonic Blog includes posts about custom earmold manufacturing and the hearing health industry.