Okay, so we have umpteen gazillion leaves down in our yard and TWO (count ’em) compost carts to put them out for pickup. That means not a whole lot can go out for the weekly pickup.

We used to rake everything out into the street (I have written about this before). We would rake them onto big sheets of plastic and drag them down to dump them. The city would come and pick them up a couple times in the fall. It was fun and I was a rock star raker in those days. But then the city ended that program and we were left to do various things with our leaves. Like hire somebody to come and get rid of them maybe. The GG being a HUGE DIYer (good and bad) ramped up to use his (gasoline powered) lawnmower to mulch the leaves and also gather them in an attached bag that he can DETACH to dump them into our compost carts. He puts them in various other places too and he uses a (gasoline powered) leaf blower for detail work. “Those boys and their toys” was something like what The Beautiful Sally (my late mother-in-law) used to say. But she was mainly talking about shovels and rakes in those days.

The GG is off gallivanting on the north country trail (with my blessing) and most of the leaves are down now. Problem. I cannot rake and drag them down into the street any more. (I am not complaining about the change in policy. I’m sure there were good reasons). But I am not friends with the lawnmower or leaf blower. But. I needed to at least make a minor dent. So. I dredged a cardboard Duraflame box up from the Landfill Dungeon (I had to remove a few weird items from it first). I raked leaves into a pile, used my HANDS to put them into the box, then dumped the box into a compost cart. It was very easy to fill a cart but given the ton of leaves in my yard (more to come, oaks anyone?) it would take 20 compost carts a week to dispose of them that way.

My daughters are “threatening” to come over and help with the leaves. They are both good at raking and one of them owns her own lawnmower and knows how to use it. But we’ll see. The GG will be home soon and I could always hire someone. Like the Skyline High choir kids and donate to their fundraiser? In the end, the problem is not the raking, it’s where the heck to put the goddamn leaves! We can’t just dump them into the swamp because this is the one out of three properties we own that doesn’t have a swamp behind it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.