So i spent a good portion of today vacuuming my sister's lawn........with her upright vacuum.
Allow me to explain. My sister is moving. She's been in this house about 40 years and over that time there is a lot of stuff that has accumulated. A few years ago (actually more like 15-20 years) she had the bathtub removed for a walk-in shower, so the old shower doors ended up downstairs in the basement. They were in good shape so I thought it might benefit someone if I moved them up to the curb for the suburban version of dumpster-diving. They were kind of heavy but I found it was easier if I used the towel bar as a handle as I brought them up the basement stairs. I got the first one out to the curb and stood it against some chairs that I had brought up earlier and went back for the second one. Got that one up the stairs fine too, and down the steps by the front door. No bumps, no dings, just fine.
I don't even know what happened, I took one step onto the lawn and the whole piece of glass just disintegrated. I was left holding the towel bar as the whole thing just showered down in a thousand little pieces. Thankfully it was safety glass, so it all just bounced off me, nothing but one drop of blood on each forearm and a small chunk that found it's way into my sock. But all that safety glass was now a thousand little pieces laying on a nice thick suburban lawn. Okay, a rake and a shovel should be a good way to get this up, and I knew where the plastic snow shovel was. But the rake had already gone wherever it is that rakes go when you are moving out of a house. I tried using just the shovel to see if I could scoop it up, but got very little. So my wife and i teamed up with the shovel and an old broom and picked up quite a bit. But there was still plenty left, and now it was settling into the grass. No Shop-vac... that was gone too. So i grabbed the upright vacuum and attached the utility hose and just started sucking up every piece i could see. It took a long time, but it worked pretty well. I got all the glass and few pebbles and acorns.
Now here's the weird part: as we were just about finished vacuuming the lawn, we heard a strange noise, and turned around to see that the other glass panel had also shattered. No wind, no passing car to knock it over - nothing that we could see. Fortunately for us, most of this glass was on the sidewalk, so it was easier to sweep and the vacuuming was easier on concrete than it was on grass.