You can fuck leaves?
Why doesn’t anybody tell me this important shit?
And here I was buying cards and candy and writing poems on Valentines day…to no avail.
I’m grabbing a beer and hitting the back yard post haste.
Don’t wait up for me!
PS. If the OP wants something to really bitch about…get a yard full or Pine or Magnolia trees.
First house we bought was up in Northeastern Massachusetts. Nice little place. About an acre of land with maybe a quarter of it cleared around the house. The rest had scrub oak. We were from western Mass. so expected leaves. The oaks held on way past all the pretty leaves falling. Then one day we came home from work and the yard, the driveway, the lawn furniture, the shrubs, the path, the cats, everything was buried under six inches of brown leather. Not a single leaf left on the trees. It was amazing. And those were some tough leaves. The back ditch had stratified layers. None of this pussy mulching stuff. The ones from six years ago were still recognizable as leaves. Couldn’t mow them either - they clogged the mower.
We sold the house.
I’ll still take leaves over pine needles. Those prickly things are denser and considerably more difficult to rake up. Also, until we were provided with yard waste bins, they always had a tendency to poke and puncture black yard bags so they fell apart.
For 8 years I worked at a little amusement park near here. It was entirely set in a pine forest. I was part of the crew that stayed on every year for “tear-down”. This included dismantling all of the rides and putting them away. It also included leaf-blowing the entire park, which was covered in needles and cones…and we did it twice. 8 hours a day for 2 weeks, of nothing but blowing pine needles, with a blower on my back.
We live in the boonies and have an acre of lawn, plus areas around the barn, meadow, paddock, etc that get mowed. But our lawn is part of our septic system, so it does serve a purpose. It also looks nice.
Leaves we shred/pick up with the mower for use in mulching flower beds. I actually had to “mow” the edge of a horse pasture yesterday to collect additional leaves for mulching.
Back on my folks’ farm, we were glad to have a handful of pine trees close to the house- they provided very nice mulch in-between the raised garden beds. Then every 4 years or so, we’d dig up the old stuff and work it into the actual beds- at that point, it was just nice, black soil with a bit of needles on top.
The ones that really make me ill are when I drive into the country and see assholes with 10 acres of land and it is all one solid chemlawn nightmare with that asshole on a huge driving mower permanently circling it. :mad:
The house across the street from me has about the same amount of lawn - maybe a quarter acre, all around - and the guy is mowing or blowing about one hour out of any daylight three. I’ve watched him move up from a relatively low-end tractor/mower to (presently) a Cub Cadet ZTR big enough for the tight parts of a golf course. He’s absolutely obsessed with the English castle lawn thing… and in winter, not a flake of snow is allowed to remain on the driveway for more than an hour. (I have photos of him and his family out shoveling and blowing frantically. You can barely see them through the blizzard.)
Point above, lawns here are almost always as much to give a clear septic leach field as for any decorative/status purpose. Until they get measured in acres because by god that’s what we had back in Indiana or Alabama or whatever.
The other nice thing about our acre of lawn is the wildlife feeding station we have on one corner. It’s nice to sit by the fireplace on a snowy day, watching the deer and turkeys.
I’m always amused by the idea of using a leafblower, or burning leaves. Cause here in the PNW that shit won’t work, because leaves are saturated with water. You want to clear leaves, you better get out a wheelbarrow and pitchfork.
We have three birdfeeders hanging right in front of our dining room window and it’s a 2-ring circus all year round. Cardinals in the snow still amaze me.
We get squirrels by the herd, bunnies by the hutch and deer by the pair pretty much all year as well. Black bear are moving slowly southward and there are continual reports of them within a mile of us.
Not sure where our next stop is, in about two years, but it probably won’t be quite so rural, and I’ll miss it.
ETA: But not the leaves.
Leaves are a PITA. They’re made of lignin so only mold/lichens can break them down properly (mixing them with compost is a pretty good way to ruin your compost heap). And oak leaves kill your lawn (and other vegetation) quickly. The best solution is to not have a lawn 
; the next best thing is to let them blow onto the street* or your neighbor’s lawn. 
*In some NE towns and cities the Parks Dept will vacuum your leaves off the sidewalk with a specialized truck, which is pretty cool.
Sounds almost tranquil but I don’t trust them. Earlier this year, a flock of turkeys started a fight with the truck I had because they saw themselves in the chrome trim.
Me: “Hey. Hey!"<bang bang bang on the window.> Nobody budges, so I went out there with a push broom to convince them to move along. They had to think about it.
If I stay ahead of the problem, I can clear my drive way and decks with a leaf blower even when wet. It requires about 10 separate sessions each Fall, however. If I let them pile up for more than a week, I have to resort to more difficult solutions.
Well, the OP fucks shoots & leaves.
Easier said than done. The municipalities have ordinance that require lawns, or at least against lots full of weeds and eyesores. They de facto require a lawn, and it’s sort of expected. A few cranks will try alternatives like prarie and such, but the neighbors will insist that they are harboring snakes and vermin, mosquitos, and other critters.
Lawn care is OK, but only to a point. Leaves cross that line, glad I don’t have a sugar maple. They are pretty, but jeeze louise that’s a lot of leaves.
I like a reasonably well cared for lawn because mowing weeds is especially futile as it were. A nice lawn keeps temps cooler, has a finished, pleasing appearance and keeps the dust and noise down. Leaves are kind of an enemy to a lawn because they will pack down and smother and kill the grass, which means of course next season a bazillion different species of tenacious, drought tolerant crabgrass will invade.
Maybe a mix of plantain, dandelion, crabgrass and purslaine would be a viable ground cover in lieu of turfgrass. “Low maintenance.”
I have some out too, and in past years I filled them maybe every few days. This year a bunch of blue jays have decided to hang out and the empty both feeders almost immediately. And they bully the squirrels and little birds. Grrr.
As much as I hate leaf blowing, I am thankful that my village comes around a few times every Fall, and takes away the piles of leaves that all of us leave out in the street.
They also fill our empty sheet rock buckets with sand for the Winter. I put 6 buckets out by the road, and they come and fill them for me.
You guys are giving me valuable input on what type of property to select when we move to the PNW when we retire. I don’t think clearing leaves and needles on a half-acre of land is what we’ll be wanting to do when we’re old and creaky.