I Hate Leaves

Autumn is the worst season of the year, at least late autumn.  That is because of falling leaves.  It is one thing to have the leaves in my yard fall and then have to collect them up to dispose of.  I can even handle leaves falling from neighbor’s trees.  But the leaves that the neighbors see fit to rake into the street so that when a good wind come along, that all get blown up into my yard. 

I will generally use my yard-vac to suck them up and shred them into tiny pieces that get collecting into a bag, and then transfer those to a larger, plastic bag to haul to the landfill for composting.  I say generally, because I also play the game of raking them into piles in the street to be collected by the village.  I did that initially when the leaves started dropping.  However, it took almost a month for the first collection by the Village, so that in the interim, much of what I had raked up was blown back into my yard as well as the neighbor’s.  Once my pile was about 20 feet long by three and a half or four feet high.  It is now only about two feet high.  So I decided to raise the deck on the mower and suck up what has been blown around and just take them to compost myself. 

We have some very strange wind patterns around the house, and it seems like things always collect in a few certain areas.  That and in lines approximately two feet from the fence.  Those are easy enough to vacuum back up, the stuff that collects behind the house and around the back stoop.  The leaves that congregate there tend to be a pain because collecting them will end up clearing out cocoa mulch in addition to the leaves.  I just can’t wait for the next good, hard freeze so that everything will drop and I can be done with them for the year!