Will you rake/mulch your freaking leaves already?!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Pretty sure we’ve done this before, but just wanted to (mildly) vent about the challenges of wrangling leaves in the midwestern fall, when your neighbors don’t do much w/ their lawns. I guess a part of me can respect someone saying that they are going to wait until ALL of the leaves are down before doing ANYTHING, but in reality, it imposes some hassle upon neighbors who think otherwise.

I’m far from a lawn nazi. I use the mower to mulch the leaves on our suburban residential property. In the best of situations, I probably have to do it 3 times from Oct through Nov. The final leaf pick-up by the city is the first week of Dec. Another challenge is our weather. We’ve already gotten 2 measurable snows since Halloween, and last year we got hammered over Thanksgiving - so there is some point in doing it when the conditions allow.

Every home on our block on both sides of the street has done SOMETHING so far WRT their leaves - with the exception of my neighbors to the immediate N. They are an apparently able-bodied childless couple in their 30s-40s. I think they do some of their yardwork and hire some out.

To the S is a nice, hardworking couple w/ 2 teenage boys whom they NEVER have do yardwork. I don’t understand that, but their choice.

To the N, their failure to rake their leaves is compounded by the fact that the curb drain is at the bottom of their driveway. They NEVER clear it out, which leaves (ha!) that for the rest of us to do. Last evening, the snow had melted, things were mostly dry, and the temp was up to 40, so I mowed over the leaves on the front lawn - including those I raked up out of the gutter. Not being anal - just noted that rain was predicted overnight with cooler temps to follow. As I mowed, the neighbor guy to the N was walking his little rat dog and looking at his phone. And I saw the HS senior to the S come home from school.

Took me MAYBE 20 minutes start to finish. Not a big deal.

Rained and wind blew from the S overnight. This a.m., you can’t tell any difference between my lawn and the one to the S. Can tell the difference compared to the N, because their leaves are 4-6" deep.

Just don’t buy a home in a nice neighborhood if you aren’t going to do the minimum to keep it looking nice.

2

OK boomer.

3

Sorry. I had been holding off because a couple trees hadn’t let go of their leaves, but took Friday afternoon off 3 weeks ago to do some yard cleanup. Or tried to - just after I finished lunch my phone rang with news that a nurse-call system at an extended care facility was down and I ended up spending the entire afternoon fixing it. Then it snowed, and hasn’t fully melted since. I might get a chance this weekend as we have slightly above zero temps forecast and there’s very little snow at the moment, but days are so short this time of year that it might not actually melt.

4

Leaves are one of my biggest problems this time of year. I built a custom walk behind blower years ago but the old knees are too painful to use it anymore. I now have a tow behind leaf vacuum that hooks to the mower and it works great. I mulch everything first like you do and then vacuum. That’s the only way I can get hundreds of pounds of leaf puree in one trailer load. Looks like I can do it one last time today before we get more rain.

Dennis

5

Like I say, I’m a LONG way from expecting lawns to be pristine. Mine sure ain’t. I don’t think my fast-growing swamp white oak has dropped even 5% of its heavy leathery leaves. And the Red Oaks in the neighborhood similarly retain their leaves well through the winter.

I guess what just kinda gets me is when people make NO effort - like the people who live to our N. They both work at home, and have enough time to walk their little dogs several times a day. Don’t worry about keeping the lawn leafless - but maybe rake up a bag or 2 from the biggest drifts?

Hell - I’ll readily acknowledge that a (hopefully very small) part of my displeasure today is that, because of the big overnight wind, I didn’t ger even a day’s worth of having the cleanest lawn on the block! :smiley:

6

If you want your neighbors to maintain a minimum standard of beauty on their property move to a neighborhood that has an HOA. I’m more then happy to live in a neighborhood where I haven’t had a single neighbor complain that I haven’t mowed my lawn once this year and have done no work outside the house since we moved in. This is in a neighborhood where all of my neighbors have 750K houses and the next ring out has several 1MM homes (of course we bought a POS and I’ve spent the year gutting 60% of my house and rebuilding it).

7

Mine are slowly gathering in the yard. I’ll rake them into a heap by the curb over the next week or two.

Happily, for people like me, there are recent reports saying it’s better for one’s yard to leave them than to rake them. I imagine that this might depend on if you get a foot of leaves, but for my not-so-heavy accumulation, I would go the “leave them be” route with great pleasure.

8

I usually wait until Thanksgiving to do the leaves since the last pickup day is around December 1st. Why pretend like it isn’t fall and rake them before? Fall = Leaves in my mind.

So I saw all my neighbors do their lawns two Sunday ago, I did nothing. I came home early to mulch them on Monday and found that my neighbors had done my front lawn for me. Cool I cracked my after leaf cleaning beer open early because I had no intention of doing the back yard anyway. Then came the foot of snow, all the leaves fell down and everyone was back where they started once it melted. I’ll still be doing mine Thanksgiving weekend, but I feel vindicated for not doing them the first time. :smiley:

9

I managed to mow my leaves last weekend, but there are still two big-ass Norway Maples who are barely starting to turn yellow. Drop your leaves dammit! I’m not mulching this stuff over Christmas break.

10

We love to have all the neighbors leaves blow into our yard. Free fertilizer. We have a series of compost piles and leaves are a great source of materials. This falls leaves become next falls ground cover.

11

We’re lucky here in that the city collects leaves twice during the fall. I sweep them all off the sidewalk and into the street, then into a windrow. City trucks rigged with hoppers on the fronts come along and scoop them all into the nearest intersection, where they’re either loaded or blown into dump trucks to haul off. Then the sweepers come through and clean up the leftovers. That just leaves the ones in my yard, which I don’t give a damn about.

12

The prevailing winds blow downhill across my lawn. I’ve not raked in 20 years but the end of the street gets a nice collection.

13

The previous two falls I’ve gone the no-rake route. The prevailing wind pushes the leaves from the terrace onto the bank in front of my house. And in both of the following springs, I’ve had a surprising number of morel mushrooms sprout on that bank. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

14

I’ve never been able to figure out why people rake leaves. What’s wrong with leaving* them where they are?

*well, it’s intended now.

15

We went on a early-November trip down south, and the leaves were all still on the trees when we left. Then when we got home, the leaves had all fallen and a half-foot of snow had fallen on them. The snow’s since melted, but the leaves are still a sopping mess, so I can’t very well mulch them yet. If the rainy weather continues to prevent me from mulching, I’ll just wait until spring. Luckily we live in the country with no neighbors to speak of, so who really gives a shit? But I’ll admit these big wet, brown magnolia leaves look freaking terrible on the lawn. I really do want to mulch them.

16

No, I won’t

17

I love this PSA! I leave the leaves in my yard too, if raked it’s in a pile, the yard I will not apoligize is wild unmanaged a friend to things that buzz and crawl. Bumper crops of amazing winged things this past summer after a drought of insects. It pleases me so to have a wild yard.

sorry not sorry Dinsdale

18

My leaves at one of my homes often will just blow away on their own, downhill where there are other houses and a road. Not really sure if there is much to do about it beyond some reasonable mulching. But maybe 75% of them emigrate to other properties.

19

Nitpick on the PSA- moths don’t do chrysalises, butterflies do. Moths spin cocoons. Anyway, pristine suburban lawns are generally ecological disasters.

20

I don’t rake. My yard is acres. I keep my flower beds cleaned out. No neighbors. We have no county pick up so we’d have to burn them. I just consider the leaf cover just how the yard is.
If I lived in a suburb I might follow suit. If it seemed that was thing to do.
OTOH, my sister lives in a suburb of Austin, TX. Before the ink was dry on her mortgage the HOA came for a visit with a list of dos and don’ts. It is positively dictatorial. I couldn’t live like that. My wheelbarrow has been halfway between the deck and my garden patch for a month. I looked out the other day and it was up-ended. I assume Mr.Wrekker did that because water was in it. I’ll put it in the barn eventually. But it’s ok with me where it is.