Tis the season. As soon as dawn breaks, the neighborhood resounds with leaf blowers. We got your electric ones, your hand held gas ones and your back pack professional models. Every once in a while, you see someone raking leaves. Now, Pat and I don’t live in a development with acreage, even though, some guys have riding lawn mowers. I can mow my front yard in 20 minutes. But, I digress. The Plain Dealer had its annual article discussing the world of leaf blowing. Do you blow the leaves or do you use a rake, the Plain Dealer asks. Our city picks up leaves twice in the fall. It’s funny that the trees don’t normally cooperate by dropping their leaves to coincide with the pickup days. Whole families bond by collecting leaves on the weekends. How sweet is that? It doesn’t seem to matter that the wind blows the leaves back into the yards, not necessarily the yards where they came from, but yards never the less. I guess it’s just more bonding time for the next week end.
What I don’t get is why I seem to be the only one who mows the leaves. I enjoy family bonding opportunities as much as anyone. If our kids lived with us, I’d get them to participate in some labor intensive project. It just wouldn’t be collecting leaves. I would save opportunities like this for number 57 river rock or sweet peet. Mowing leaves is so much easier than collecting them. It’s better for the yard, better for the environment and better for keeping peace in the family. None of the kids we see collecting leaves look all that happy.
3 comments:
I too use the mower to mulch leaves (and even some dried perennials) back into the lawn. I used to fret on having pristine beds through winter when I decided to garden like Mother Nature does! Now I have lots of free material to turn into the beds in spring. Thanks for your post.
I am with you Jim. I always mow ours up too. As you say it is good for the soil. When they pick up leaves in your area do they take them to a place that uses them for compost? Sell those leaves back to the same people who raked them in the first place when they buy compost. LOL!
Sometimes we just mow over them to return to the earth and sometimes we rake them and run them through a shredder for a particular set of beds' mulch. We certainly don't burn or throw away a commodity like leaves.
Post a Comment