Posted 1:53 PM by Bonnie

All the leaves are gone.... As I look out my window now the tree across the street is bare of leaves. The ground is now covered with a blanket of colors that will soon be raked up into bags and hauled away to a landfill, preserved forever in plastic bags. This is a tradition of fall I have never understood and I know my neighbors think I am totally bonkers for not following the same line. I have this theory that nature knows what it is doing and we interfere too much in the natural process. The leaves cover the ground in the winter to protect the grass and flowers (that will bloom again in spring) from the cold of winter and up north from the snow that covers the ground. I leave my leaves to blanket the earth. In the spring those that haven't composted do get raked, but again I don't follow the tradition of putting them in plastic bags to be hauled away. They still have another service to provide. Those that remain are raked around the trees to mulch and add nutrients to the earth around the trees, bushes, etc, that grow in the yard. I trust that nature will nurture the earth with the composting leaves and add much needed nutrients back into the soil. IMHO.