One of our favorite ‘little Holly’ stories comes from when she was about two years old. Always a fan of rules and order, she was perturbed when a cascading leaf found its way on to the windshield of my car and wedged itself between the glass and the windshield wiper.
In her singsong toddler voice, she inquired: “Can YOU get dat leaffff?”
Simply put, she knew that leaves don’t belong on cars and she was encouraging me to restore the situation to its natural order.
Fast-forward to yesterday. Toddler Holly would’ve been quite dismayed to find all of those leaves – rich reds and warm ambers – out of place, strewn randomly across our front yard, front porch and brick walk-way.
Wayward leaves don’t belong on brick walk-ways, either.
College-aged Holly joined me for a pleasant afternoon of raking leaves on a beautiful warm, autumn day. It was a great time for us to catch up on the week’s activities and also to catch up on collecting all the leaves that fell since I raked them earlier this week.
For every plus there’s a minus, I guess. The beauty of autumn also brings the fall of leaves. This produces the age-old question: “Where do ya put’m?” A few years ago, I ran across one article online that suggested you needed to develop a “Leaf Management Plan.” The article went on to outline various options (one of which featured a multi-pronged strategy).
The article read a lot like a crisis communications plan I wrote a number of years ago.
Looking around our neighborhood, I’ve found there are many options for “Leaf Management.”
One guy likes to let all of his leaves fall before he springs into action. His ‘strategy,’ is to blow them all into the street and let them sit for a couple weeks. Eventually, some company comes along with a large truck and an industrial-sized suction hose to collect them. Of course, by the time they’ve arrived, a good portion of his leaf production has been distributed by the cold north wind up and down the street.
Many find their way on to the previously-raked lawns of grumbling neighbors.
A second strategy seems to be called “Burn Baby, Burn.” You just hope you are downwind when the fire starts burning. Nothing ruins a lovely fall afternoon faster than the choke of smoke.
A third option is the bag and ship method. In other words, these folks bag up their leaves and send them with the trash collector to be taken to a local landfill. Considering we seem to be major consumers of landfill space, this doesn’t really seem like the best option for an organic product such as a decaying leaf.
Since I have a few areas around the edge of my woods that frequently seem hungry for such organic material, I’ve settled on the ‘rake and dump’ Leaf Management Plan. In other words, I rake them (onto a tarp) and then I take the tarp to the edge of the woods and dump the contents.
Scientific, eh?
The other night, I placed a few tarpfuls at the base of the bat house we installed back in the summer. I noticed that part of our property has endured some significant wash with heavy rains last winter. I am hoping the piles of leaves will replenish some much needed nutrients and stem any potential erosion.
That area used to get its own supply of leaves but when we had to take down a rapidly dying tree many years ago – it was literally rotting from the inside – we cut off the leaf supply.
What we raked up in the front yard yesterday should be a good first step.
JG
(Source: urbanext.illinois.edu)
Originally posted 10/27/2012
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