I Hate Leaves

In my yard, there are a lot of trees. I mean a whole lot of trees; with big leaves; and they all fall to the ground every year. And they take their sweet time to do it. I don't know whether that is good or bad because in one way I'd like to take care of them all at once instead of over a month and a half but then again, if they all came down at the same time, we would probably either suffocate or get lost for a week trying to get out of the yard.

Last week on Veteran's Day, the last good weather day we had, I spent several hours mulching leaves on the west driveway. It gets especially bad there because the driveway is lined with hybrid poplars and they have a lot of very big leaves. In the past we've bagged them but this year I decided to mulch the lot. I usually mulch the leaves on the lawn but last year I bought a lawn vac to give it a try. I eventually took it back to Sears because it kept getting clogged up with the twigs that also come down. Man, the Sears' guys gave me dirty looks that day.

So back to Veteran's Day, after I mulched the leaves that had fallen on the driveway, I raked leaves out of the ditch and onto the driveway to mulch them. There was so many, I had to do it a couple of times (mind you, I've been mulching the leaves on the driveway every week for a month at this point). It was worse this year because my neighbor raked up the leaves which had fallen from my trees into his yard and dumped them back into my yard. I can't blame him really, I probably be unhappy with those leaves if I was him.

This photo is the driveway covered with leaves for the third time in the same day and I have run the mower through the middle of the pile one time.


The photo below is the finished product. There are probably about 4 feet of leaves mulched on the driveway from this day alone.


Now I have to pray there is a good weather day this week to finish up the leaves on the lawn. I've mulched them about 5 times and I think 1 more should do the trick.