okay, I'll rake

I don't talk about the mundane garden chores too often: mowing the lawn (barely had to do it this year), weeding (okay, I do talk about that once in a while), and raking. It's not that I hate doing them (except for mowing the lawn), it's just that I assume that most people reading this have plenty of experience with them and don't want to read about them.

Today though I'm going to talk about one of them. Can you guess which one?

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I enjoy raking the fallen leaves each year, but I really only want to do it once or twice. I'm not what you'd call obsessive about my lawn. I don't pull out the leaf blower every time a leaf lands on the driveway (I don't even own a leaf blower, although I'm starting to think that one might be handy to help get leaves out of plantings). I don't rake every weekend starting October 1st and ending when the last leaf has fallen.

I like to let the leaves pile up and then take care of them at one time. I'm the only one on my street with this philosophy though, as you may be able to see in the above photo: the line defining the edge of my neighbor's leafless lawn is clearly seen.

The main problem with the rake-once philosophy though is this guy:

An oak that hangs on to many of its leaves quite tightly, dropping them throughout winter and into spring. So although the maple and ash leaves have already been removed from the lawn, the oak leaves are starting to pile up.

So I need to rake again.

I'll only clean the lawn, keeping the leaves in the planting beds. I won't rake more leaves into the beds, but I will leave the ones that have already stuck there in place.

So that means the walkway won't get too much attention:

I will remove the leaves from the stones though, as the creeping thyme can't be smothered:

Are you wondering what all of those seeds are?

They're from the ash tree. That tree is not doing well (like most of them in my neighborhood) and will probably be taken down in the next couple of years. It's producing more seed than ever, which I wonder is a sign that it knows it's not in good health?


A little time passes, some effort with the rake, fun and exercise both.

This is about as much effort as I'll put into it now. As I said, those oak leaves will keep falling.

The walkway looks almost exactly the same as it did before the raking began:

The lawn though is happier, as the smothering leaves won't be creating more bare patches.

I should go over this with the mower, as the grass is longer than I'd like. There's almost no way to get the mower out of the garage right now though.


I really do wonder if my neighbors who leaf blow daily might be convinced to spend those efforts growing more of a garden?

I'm going to work on that next year. Spread the gardening bug, and hopefully reduce the blower noise!

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