Is it pointless to rake leaves if they haven’t all fallen off the tree? Would you wait until all have fallen but three? Two? One?
Or do you just pray for a big wind to blow them all into someone else’s yard?
There’s a best way to do this autumn activity. I’m still trying to figure out what that best way might be.
If your leafblower breaks, do you use a rake? If your rake breaks, do you use your hands, or feet? Are you the kind of person who prefers to mulch the leaves with a mower? Do you rake them up and put them in with the compost? It’s probably the best way to use leaves. That’s how they’re used by nature. Leaves are the top of the topsoil. Leaf piles are frequented by fat worms. Worms love the loamy part of the naturally decaying piles of leaves. That part at the bottom where it’s all damp and the leaves are barely discernible as leaves because they look more like dirt—that’s where the worms love to be.
Do you pile the leaves in your garden, hoping to attract worms? Do you play in the leaf piles, rolling around, covering yourself in leaves, and hoping not to find worms?
Do you turn the leaf piles into the garden soil with a trowel, a shovel, a rake, a hoe, or a tiller? How close to the earth do you get? Are you the kind who really gets in, so that every part of you gets some dirt on, or are you the kind who lets the natural world go on doing what it does?
Then again, maybe you’re in the middle of the spectrum. Maybe you dig a little dirt, rake seven leaves, and then let the rest of nature go on as it would without you.
The natural way is probably the best way, if you can get away with it. Some people put themselves into slavery by joining an HOA, and then the HOA dictates to them when and how the leaves are moved. If the HOA commanded the people to ingest and digest the leaves in their own yards, they would have to do it. Contractual obligations, you know? Well, you can praise the Lord every day you don’t belong to an HOA. Those people suffer, while the rest of us enjoy watching the last persistent leaf in the tree like a dog watching a squirrel, or a squirrel staring at an acorn.
Xenosthesia.com 