I love the fall because the trees put on a great show but by Thanksgiving most of the leaves are down and homeowners start to panic. Now what? This is what Ronda Kaysen asks in her New York Times article from November 25, 2018.
Some homeowners bravely get out their rakes and do their fall chores. Some wonder if there is a better way. And there might just be.
Mow-in-place method
One method is called “mow in place” where you simply run the leaves over with your mower and leave the brown mulch on your lawn. It will provide cover for butterflies and moths and you won’t have to rake up anything.
This past week I was working across from a lawn covered by leaf debris; it wasn’t overwhelming but it was noticeable. And the owner-seeing my backpack blower- mentioned that if he feels like it he will shred it with his mower.
Here’s a good spot for some technical information. One, make sure the leaf drop is manageable for your mower engine. You can crush the engine by running over big piles.
And two, speaking of piles, don’t leave them on the lawn for too long because they block light from reaching the grass. Then all you will get is an ugly brown spot. Instead you can rake or blow the leaves into your beds.
Kids
Back to the homeowner mentioned above. To the right of his house is a public park and the week previous I witnessed something spectacular. Pre-schoolers walked-up in one line, quietly following their teacher. Then she set them loose so they could run in the leaf litter. And, of course, playing in giant leaves of the native Acer macrophyllum was a lot of fun.
The kids were running and screaming with delight, white, yellow and black. I desperately wanted to record this moment but this is 2018. I can hardly afford to look like a pedophile in my dirty company uniform.
Guess what happened the following week? The City of Burnaby came with their ride-on mower and shredded everything to bits. And then left it.
Lawn lust
Ronda Kaysen writes that she was a bit slow and her yard started to look worse. Then she looked at her neighbours who had hired professional landscapers. And they do what we do on our strata complexes: they blow everything clean with noise and air polluting backpack blowers; and they remove the debris. When Kaysen saw her neighbour’s clean yard, she felt “lawn lust“.
Homeowners are free to do as they wish with their yards. Professional landscapers are paid to clean everything up. If you’re not worried about butterflies over-wintering under your lawn mulch then you can hire professionals. That will leave your neighbours to feel “lawn lust.”
