Leaves (on) grass: What’s at stake if you don’t rake?

Yeah, I get the scorned looks from my neighbors since I haven't raked yet and their yards are all green and neat. Instead, I wait for all the leaves to drop, grind them up with my mulching/recycling mower (once-and-done!). Big payoff is that I don't have to add nutrients to the lawn year after year and don't need to water either.

First.

Rake your leaves, you lazy bums

Agreed. Mulching is the way to go ...

Rake leaves? No. I have people.

Don't think so Chris.

"leave" us alone

If you leave oak leaves on your lawn, the acid content will play havoc with the pH in your lawn's soil. Same thing with pine needles. Leave the leaves and needles on your lawn (or worse, grind them up), and your grass will be needing lime in pretty short order, unless you like the look of clumpy, weed-infested grass for your lawn... Another point is, if your neighbors rake and you don't , you had better pray the wind doesn't blow... I'm not beyond making 'midnite donations' of my leaves to the lazy bums upwind from me - that's why God invented leaf blowers....

Leaes do not decompose during the winter. Bacteria and fungi need warm temperatures to do there work - every heard of refrigerators? I store leaves in my back yard for composting in the spring, and they look the same in March as they did in November. A layer of wet leaves on the lawn will encourage diseases in many cases. My leaf blower-mulcher is the best yard tool I ever bought. No more raking, and I get nice cut up leaves that compost much better than whole leaves. They also take up less space.

Clean up your yard - it looks like a p**phole.

what do you think? See comment 1

Raking was once a pleasant autumn pastime... the fresh cool air, the foresty smell of the leaves, the sound of crisp leaves underfoot and children playing in the piles. But the ubiquitous and incessant droning of leaf blowers has ruined the experience of fall. Nobody seems to rake anymore. They hire landscapers who descend on the neighborhood with an army of gassed-up, backpacked noisemakers which disturb the peace of Sundays and holidays, keep the children indoors playing video games and pollute the air. It's called progress. I just rake leaves into a pile and LEAVE them to compost in the corner.

First.

You come rake my leaves, chris.. I'll give you a shiny quater.

I'm in the middle. I rake my leaves as they fall to keep up with them because my yard is more then an acre, but I also try my best to keep a "green yard". What bothers me most about people who don't rake is that sooner or later they NEED to rake and the longer the wait the harder the job. Meanwhile much of their natural garbage blows into my freshly groomed site! Could that be the draw for them?

what about pine needles ,need to rake up or what happens

I use my lawnmower to 'vacuum' the leave, and what is left behind is left behind. It all turns back into dirt. Oh, and I don't break out the lawn mower until the last leaf has fallen!

I'd be happy to let the leaves stay on the lawn, but my neighbors would resent it when the leaves blow into their yards. Some neighbors who don't rake have bad reputations because their leaves end up in everyone else's yards. I rake to be a good neighbor.

...and some people (like me) LIKE the look of leaves on the ground! My husband & I compromise... for the sake of our son, who LOVES to jump in the piles.... we rake twice in the fall... once the middle of October and once over Thanksgiving weekend. It's great exercise.... for us and our son!

As a landscape designer and certified organic landcare professional (yes, it's a mouthful, but check out nofa.org) I have been trying to convince all of my customers to mince their leaves and use them as mulch. This is what mother nature does and it is the best way to get nutrients back into the soil to keep it healthy, the basis of organic gardening. We've been trained to clean up our yards and keep them neat so we ship leaves off to landfills or compost facilities (if we are lucky) and then have our landscaping companies deliver bark dyed mulch in the spring. It does not make a lot of sense. The "green" landscape practice advocates keeping leaves onsite and resuing them. For more info you can look at my blog www.gardenandthegoodlife.com.

You have a right to not rake, and we have a right to be unhappy that you don't.

If you don't rake, we all end up raking your leaves as they blow into our yards.

I rake three times after my trees are completely bare - year after year after year.

You may be happy that I am getting all of the exercise. I will probably out-live you and then I will be feeling bad that I harbored such ill feelings when you go. You will give me a guilt complex. Thanks a lot

First of all, the whole green lawn is a suckers game. Picking one weed (yes grass is a weed) preferentially over all the others and saying it is the only acceptable thing to have on your lawn, I mean, how dumb do you have to be to buy that? Grass seed manufactures and lawn care companies make a mint off of people that are too dumb to realize that grass is just another type of weed.

Though we don't have droughts up here like people in the southern climes do, water is every bit as valuable. The idea of having a perfectly manicured lawn does not exist in nature-- indeed, it's a recent phenomenon (within the last hundred or so years.)
Keep a yard instead of a lawn, and you save all the energy necessary to filter and pump water to your house. Plant drought tolerant varieties of flowers, shrubs, and so on, and you gain a weekend without having to give up something that looks nice. With a little creativity, you can leave the mower in the garage (and help the country save a little oil in the process-- score!!!)
And maybe save a bit of carbon in the process...

leaf blowers should be banned. Doesn't anyone value quiet anymore? I really don't understand it. If you can't manage to rake, landscape for less lawn.

Does mulching oak leaves with a mower add to a thatch problem come spring? My neighbor mulches and it looks like that mat of leaves settles in and stays around for a long while.

If I lived in a place called Greenlawn, I would be harrassed to no end, I believe. I rake my leaves, but not too fine, and leave the smaller pieces on the lawn to decompose naturally.
Then I take the bags (I reuse construction grade bags year after year) of leaves and distribute them around my foundation for added insulation during the cold months (yeah, it looks a little trashy but the house is heated with electricity and every bit helps).
In the spring I empty the bags at our landfill where the proprietors grind and mix the leaves with sand and, when decomposed, they give it away.

2 words...
Mulching.
Lawnmower.

I still need to rake under the schrubs, but it beats raking and bagging a yard's worth of leaves... and it accomplishes a few other things - 1) the mulched leaves provide a natural fertilizer as they decompose, 2) My lawn is trim for the winter and 3) I can run the gas out of the mower, and prep it for spring.

Raking isn't necessary and it helps my yard and garden. If my neighbors do not like it they can pay to have them raked and for the maintenance of my yard and garden. It would be different if I were leaving trash or other waste in my yard but falling leaves are an act of nature and to be expected. It is a natural process.

And who has time to go out and rake leaves? If I had to do it I wouldn't be able to do it until after 7:30pm when I got home from work and I am sure those neighbors that give those nasty looks over the lawn will soon be complaining of the late night raking.. Unfortunatley my weekends are filled with obligations that I can not fulfill during the week do to my job.

No trees = No leaves

I understand not raking the yard - but people should clean up the leaves on the sidewalks. When it rains, the leaves become slick and it is tantamount to not shoveling snow. There is a house right by my office on a slight slope that never rakes, and for months each year I avoid that part of the sidewalk, sometimes having to walk in the street, to avoid slipping. I've fractured my left elbow three times, once slipping on ice, so perhaps I'm being overly cautious - but people should consider this before they ignore leaves in front of their house!

Yes Patrix, and raking your damned leaves IS one of your obligations.

Raking is a huge waste of time and energy. The leaves (if mulched) provide good nutrients for the soil. Oh... and the leaves look fine on your lawn too. Not nearly as bad as the and fake, unnatural, high maintenance, over manicured, shopping mall-like lawn you see in the south.

I only rake leaves at the very end of the fall or in early spring, and I use the leaves as mulch in my flower garden and my vegetable garden. If I have extra I put them in my compost to provide wonderful soil for my gardens in the near future. I would gladlly take all the bags of leaves that everyone in my town is leaving on the sidewalk for being sent to the dump. Then I'd save lots of money for I'd never need to buy garden soil at the hardware stores.. When I mow the lawn I always leave the mowed grass there to provide wonderful soil for the lawn. Even my neighbor on the east side gives me all their mowed grass and I use that too.
Anyone putting chemicals on their lawn is destroying the water in the state of MA for that is where it all ends up. I love dandelions in my lawn too and other flowers.
My goal is to have my lawn(or yard) eventually become 99% gardens, just like those beautiful english flower gardens. But I must admit, then there are weeds to deal with. I really don't see much point in grass unless it is ornamental.

Yard work is for suckers...it is a thankless job. once one thing is done, another things needs to be done. i love winter because i do have to cut grass or do anything to the yard outside.

What happened to mother nature? Leaves fall in the forests and no one rake them there. I am not a lazy person, but believe in keeping nature doing, what it is supposed to do. R
Right now looking out my window - I see my lawn totally covered, but I know as soon as we get a bit of wind the leaves will go elsewhere. Not necessary to my neighbors yard. What is left, I leave to decompose. My lawn is green and lush and I don't have to pay some company to come and throw chemicals on it.
I know my neighbor across the street does not like it. As soon as he sees a few leaves, he is out there with his blower for hours. I think he is lot more dangerous to the environtment than I. .

I do what my parents before me did - I have my kids rake the leaves. Its good hard work that so few kids today know anything about. Being of value to the lawn would just be a bonus.

Strange how these postings remind me of recent comments on articles leading up to the last election. One side: The tradition is to rake, your neighbors will hate you if you don't, you're lazy if you don't rake (or blow with very loud, gas-powered machines), No Trees = No Leaves. The other side: The facts are that leaves are natural mulch, decompose naturally one way or the other, the 'lawn' as we know it is a relatively recent, marketing-driven fad, there is a way to have a 'greener' yard, use less energy, save resources, time to think about changing. I would love to find out: Are Diehard Rakists (Anti-Leafists?) more Red State? Personally, I think they deserve to lose this argument too.

Leaf Raking service.....Reasonable rates...
E-mail me to set up arrangements
Thanks
" Leaves be gone"
cdillahunt@comcast.net

Hi webmaster!

Raking? So old fashioned, only for losers, that's the message from my neighbors who fire up some gas-powered something or other to tend to the leaves. One neighbor uses a leaf blower to blow every single, and I mean every single, leaf across the street to a vacant patch of land.
As for us, with our nearly one acre property surrounded by woods and neighbors whose leaves blow into our yard, the solution was a CYCLONE RAKE, that hooks up to a riding mower and chops/removes the leaves. My husband has told me it is his favorite item I have ever bought and is saving years off his life. Google it.

4 years ago I let the leaves stay on the lawn. Yes I did mow and mow till it was a fine layer. Then come the Spring and Summer my lawn died a long and horrible death......
It has taken me 3 bloody years to bring it back to somewhat normal conditions.

Whats the big deal, live and let live. We all have busy lives, so do what works for you. I have a big industrial walk behind blower I bought on Craigslist and I blow my entire half acre yard in 20-30 minutes a few times a month. The leaves are blown into the corner compost pile and I reuse the material in the spring. I need to do this because of the hihg level of pine needles and red oak leaves, the acid levels are sky high in my lawn and if I dont' keep it clean, it gets clumpy and bare, which turns to dirt, dirt turns to mud when its damp, then the kids bring all that dirt in the house, not good.

Another vote for chopping and mulching in the fall/spring. (+1 Acre yard

I HAVE seen piles of leaves destroy patches of grass though, so be careful not to rake a pile before it rains and then leave it here wet for a few days.

Also - wet leaves hide ticks.

i also hate the sound of them leaf blowers, although I do use my wet vac to blow the leafs off my porch.

I don't have any trees and I think all of my neighbors that do should come over and rake for me

I'm not quite sure how a statement of "no trees=no leaves" puts me on a side of a debate, Blogworthy.
I was just rejoicing in my own situation. 1 acre of grass with a newly planted 'orchard' that doesn't produce enough leaves to be significant.

Anyone else wonder why the Toronto hockey team is the Maple Leafs when that is ungrammatical? And how would you recommend removing them from my lawn? (the hockey players)

Lou S. (Comment 7) wrote:
"I'm not beyond making 'midnite donations' of my leaves to the lazy bums upwind from me - that's why God invented leaf blowers...."

So let me get this straight, Lou. You move your leaves to your neighbors' lawns in the middle of the night with a leaf blower? I'm surprised nobody's put a brick through your window.

ha ha ha , people, lets fight and breathe fire at each other over our leaves....LOL.....ooo wait I forgot the personal attack needed in this thread....you losers....there....now go watch tv....

sound like a lot of people have anal-rententive neighbors

in my town people are even worse than they - they snip theyr lawns crew-cut tidy, until there's a line of dirt around their lawn B-O-R-I-N-G conformists

I am partial to putting on a ski mask at Midnight and raking the leaves into my neighbors back yard. He is amazed at how clean my yard is during the Fall.

The trees sit on his property line so I am just returning to him what he already owns. :)

Here's what I do:

Bring a couple of garbage barrels, a couple of rakes, an extension cord, a radio, and my two kids outside for a couple of hours on a few weekend days in October and November.

Turn radio on to football game (Sunday) or music (Saturday). Rake leaves in pile. Let's kids play in it. I use mulching mower on most of lawn. Leave piles and remaining leaves are then raked, put in barrels, and dumped in composting piles or wooded areas. Kids (6 and 2 y/o) "help" in their own little way and I enjoy the time spent with them even if it makes it take longer. Kids tell me when they've had enough and they go inside for cider or hot chocolate and a snack while I finish and put things back in the shed.

To each his own. I take care of my own yard. I don't worry about my neighbor's yard, leaves, trees, etc. And I couldn't care less about what I'm missing by not hiring a 'yard service' or 16 different gas powered instruments to make things 'easier' for me to go back inside and stare at some kind of electronic device.

"So let me get this straight, Lou. You move your leaves to your neighbors' lawns in the middle of the night with a leaf blower? I'm surprised nobody's put a brick through your window."

Lou's a red-stater.

we've already seen bundchen and brady in bed naked, so what's the point of all the modeling?

An arborist told us that our red maple tree may have developed a fungus due to wet leaves left on the ground all winter. He advised us to rake the leaves up, at least around the base of the tree to prevent it from happening again.

if you mow and bag, blow or rake, put all your leaves in a corner and let rot. If you lime in the fall, throw a lot of lime on your compost pile. If you mulch, don't worry about the type of leaves, just lime heavy in the fall and in the spring. Leave leaves under shrubs. They will decay fast and leave a nice layer on the bases. If you bag grass and mowed leaves, you can also put the mix around all your shrubs. During the growing season, you can put the cut grass on all plantings beds, gardens and under shrubs. It places N2 right where you want it and a four inch layer will decay to a crust of grass in about a week.

Hey BC - read my whole post....

If their leaves blow into my yard ('upwind'), I'm only returning their 'property' to them... If they choose to throw a brick through my window, I'll just shoot their poop-machine dog so I don't have to clean up after it anymoere, either....

At 52 years old I never thought that I could get so worked up over something that seems so unimportant. But there are people in my neighborhood also who are too lazy to do their own leaves. And by the time their landscaper gets there, I've done their crap several times....As nice a people as they are, it does create a "rub" between us.....
My 89 year old mother used to bitch about them all the time, and now my wife says I have turned into her !!!!
LOL

Let Lou S. dump his leaves upwind @ midnight, they'll just blow back to him the next day!

I'm tired of having my neighbors leaves blow into my yard. They are the laziest people around. They finally after 11 years, decided to rake this year. I think only because it rained and the leaves weren't blowing away. I only have 2 smallish trees and they have huge oaks. It's just rude to let your leaves blow into your neighbors yard when you can get off your butt and rake, or hire someone to do it for you...

Paving and green paint - only needs to be laid once and the leaves blow on by.....

I can't imagine wasting so much time and resources on leaves. My lawn guy blows them off quickly before he cuts and that's all that's required. My neighbor has an insane landscaping process where he has someone blow every leaf and sign of life off his yard, and next day some leaves fall on it.

good think I have 2' of "yard/patio"

I left the leaves last fall -- remember that early snow?? What a mess to clean up in the spring!

Find out if your municipality will compost your yard waste. The ones that do will collect your leaves (if properly bagged--and please be careful not to include any trash!!) and turn it into compost to be used in municipal landscaping. Then you'll have your lush green lawn and help your town's green spaces too!

And if your municipality does not have or participate in a composting operation, encourage them to! Think of all the leaves and tree clippings they have to deal with.

2 words:
MULCH
COMPOST!

ship the autoworkers overseas with the companies and proprietary information (good riddance!)

I don't rake....and once the first snow falls, my lawn looks every bit as good as my neighbors.....besides.....most of my leaves blow on their lawn anyway!!

Man. You people actually get upset about neighbors' leaves landing in your yards? Is this a joke? Are you people living such charmed lives that wayward leaves are an issue?

Mulch vs. rake, it is only preference. More importantly - This annual task It is about taking pride in the appearance of your investment, while owning up to your responsibility as a neighbor...Slackers: wake up, no excuses, and GET IT DONE!

KC said:
"Anyone else wonder why the Toronto hockey team is the Maple Leafs when that is ungrammatical? And how would you recommend removing them from my lawn? (the hockey players)"

That's simple, buy a case of Molson beer and lure them off. Works with all hockey players.

My town allows you to bring them to a compost pile for a one time fee of $2. then they put piles of compost out front, and you can pick it up for nothing more than a little sweat equity....

Personally I compost my own in a corner in the back. I hit them with lawnmower. Whatever bags goes in the compost, whatever stays, stays on the lawn.

Ever hear of mold and fungus...picture your kids playing in that.

SEE WE DONT HAVE TO PICK UP THE LEAVES

I don't rake that often because the leaves hide the dog poo and it's dangerous to walk around in my yard. I'll use the mulching leaf sucker I just bought in front of my fence to neaten up but it doesn't matter anyway because I always get the trash from the liquor store blown into my yard all the time. My stupid neighbor put a little wire fence on our property line and all the trash collected there (he's downwind of me). I think I'll toss some poo into his yard.

I love raking leaves and don't mind spending half a day to get them all up. What I DON'T like is having to do that more than once.

Well, I have about an a 1/2 acre and I only focus on the front of the house - let nature takes it course in the rear.

To Rynnn:
He put that fence up so your leaves wouldn't blow into his yard. I did the same thing last year. A few leaves, no big deal, I'm talking the equivalent of 30 of those brown leaf bags blowing into my yard. It's very inconsiderate.

Hay - I am not Type-A, but I resent picking leaves up when I don;t even have a tree. I have an average of 4 leaf bags a week and the lazy-bums that have the trees don't have one bag. I do use the lawnmower to clean the grass up, but the wet leaves around the house are a perfect place for mold, and termites to hang out and get in and out of your home comfortably. All because Jerks that can't maintain their trees, leave their crap on my doorstep.

what happened when you could hire a kid to rake your leaves for 25 hour cent an hour, now they are to involved with sports etc. & sucking the dollars from mom & dad its time kids got a work ethic

It's funny how people want to redefine nature in their suburban enclaves. My mother is a Ph.D. environmental engineer and hasn't mowed her suburban law in 10 years. She has grass as high as the waist and neighbors complaining to her all the time - you know what else she has? Families of rabbits, groundhogs, an occasional fox, deer and butterflies - along with wildflowers. She gets to look at this every morning and she doesn't have to pay to have it done. People, let nature do its thing and you might get a really nice place to live out of it.

It's funny how people want to redefine nature in their suburban enclaves. My mother is a Ph.D. environmental engineer and hasn't mowed her suburban law in 10 years. She has grass as high as the waist and neighbors complaining to her all the time - you know what else she has? Families of rabbits, groundhogs, an occasional fox, deer and butterflies - along with wildflowers. She gets to look at this every morning and she doesn't have to pay to have it done. People, let nature do its thing and you might get a really nice place to live out of it.

It may seem unbelievable but my parents are actually moving to avoid the "Perfect Lawn" syndrome! Oak leaves, acorns, pine needles and pine cones have driven them CRAZY for six years and now they have finally come to their senses and they are going out to the country where "MOTHER NATURE" still rules!

It is my hope we all want to part of the solution. Raking leaves into a pile over in the corner of your yard does a number of great things. For one there is the exercise. If you ache after raking you should probably do your neighbor's yard next weekend. Another great benefit is the compost material you have for next spring. If you have a garden (and if you had a yard why wouldn't you have a garden, back yard gardens are part of the solution) put the leaves in there for the winter as has already been suggested. If you can't do that doesn't your town's landfill have free green waste. Everybody brings their yardwaste there, including commercial landscapers. It sits in a pile composting and when it is ready it is free to the community. How much money do you spend each spring and summer on mulch? Yeah, it might take a season with no one picking up mulch to get it going but think sustainable. Leaves are part of the ecological system, use them to solve problems, don't use them to create problems. We have enough of those.

nobody rakes their leaves in chicago.
they are slobs.
then they complain they get tickets or have to move their car when the city does the street sweeping.

When I was in new orleans people raked all the time.

Wow! People are so nuts! This is awesome stuff. What a hoot! Rake Schmake pancake!

Nope, CSG, I don't think about my son playing in mold and fungi. I think about the fun he's having, the exercise he's getting, and the work ethic we're teaching him.

Mold and fungi are not on my radar of things from which to 'protect' him. Most likely because I grew up on a diversified dairy farm (e.g., we also had pigs, horses, goats, and sheep) and was regularly exposed to lots of stuff you would probably think much worse.

On our twice a year raking days, we also rake the lawn of our elderly neighbor (because he likes a clean lawn) and the lady next door (because she couldn't care less either way). We only do it because it makes a larger pile of leaves (and mold and fungi) for our son to play in.

In Chicago the winds blow the leaves, in New Orleans the Hurricanes blow the leaves, In Boston we complain about the leaves

your lawn is perfect, now, but you are still a creep!

Leaves are made to fall on the ground. They furnish nutrients to our Earth and also help the life forms beneath the soil. Grass does not do our enviornment any good. Whatever grows, grows and I cut it and cultivating the natural flora and fauna really makes an interesting yard--violets--dandelions, ground ivy and a host of other interesting plants which attract all sorts of living things. And, to me, that is beautiful.

My neighbors have the biggest oak tree in the cul-de-sac. Everyone has raked their leaves except for them. Today, they went out and raked all of the leaves off their lawn into 4 HUGE piles in the middle of the street and one pile in the apron of MY driveway and left them. 3 hours later, the leaves were off the street, they blew onto everyone else's lawn and into my rocks. Have you ever tried getting leaves out of rocks? It is a nightmare. If you leave them, they get moldy and smell. I have been sitting here all night trying to come up with some kind of revenge - like blowing all of my snow on their house. Any ideas?

just rake

I recently spent 50 dollars to have someone suck my leaves. I usually do it but the fall in Minnesota gets cold. I would have to suck leaves around my house. I get a backache for this sucking leaves and bagging. My husband is mad but he has never bagged or sucked leaves. He expects me to do it. Does getting the leaves off the ground before winter comes a good idea. Thanks for any opinion on this. My husband is a cheap bastard. This I know.

I live in a "Greenlawn" neighborhood, to the extreme! Some neighbor even went as far as putting a note in my mailbox telling me to be courteous and rake my leaves. What nerve! We have a lot of trees, which we love, and had mulched our leaves a few weeks ago and had fully planned to mulch again in a few days when we received this note. I don't know who sent it, but I'm fully convinced it's the anal retentive neighbor across the street who mows his leaves constantly, sometimes on a daily basis.

I should have realized searching for "the best way to clean up wet leaves" would only be a waste of time and I should just do it - here we are post Thanksgiving, yesterday the leaves were dry and ready but I listened to my husband say ... I'm off tomorrow we'll do it then.... now its raining and cold enough that its slushy. ugggghhh. We have oak trees. They hold the leaves soooo long - he's been waiting for the last one to fall so we have missed a couple of good opportunities and have already removed 10 bags from the front and side and I am starting to believe that acorns might be a good topic for that root of all evil show on comedy central.... I 'll tell you what.. I"m absolutely with J&L's parents (post 79) my wish list for retirement is growing; 3 bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, a front porch, NO OAK TREES. Alternatively I'd take a yard full of Toronto Maple Leafs any day! ; )

Mulch the leaves as soon as they hit the ground. In fact, try to catch them in mid-air with a pair of scissors.

I LIVE IN TEXAS AND HAVE A YARD FULL OF LIVE OAKS. SINCE I HAVE STARTED RAKING AROUND MY HOUSE(THE LAND HERE WAS ONCE A TEXAS TYPE WOODS) I HAVE HAD MORE GRASS EACH YEAR WHERE ONCE IT WAS ONLY DIRT AND LEAVES.I RAKE TWICE A YEAR AND TRY TO USE THEM TO MY BENIFIT. IN THE FALL I USE THEM TO PROTECT BULBS. LIVE OAK TREE LEAVES DO NOT BURN WELL SO WHAT WE DON'T USE WE SPREAD IN OUR FIELDS TO BE MOWED INTO MULCH. I DO NOT RAKE ALL OF THEM SO SOME ARE LEFT FOR THE YARD.

I don't mind our maple leaves on our grass. But I'm not so rude as to leave them to blow into our neighbors' yards. I rake them up, and put them in wire cages to decompose into mulch. In suburban areas, anyone who doesn't rake is just passing their cleanup on to someone else. Oh, wait. I forgot that some people think that's acceptable behavior these days.

This is so cute, a blog about raking leaves...

Wow! I have never taken the time to read a blog. I was merely curious to see if leaves are healthy for your lawn and I actually learned quite a bit. More about the human nature than the leaves...where is the Universal Love? :-(

I don't rake so my neighbor actually put up a snow fence to keep my leaves out of his newly raked lawn. I got a kick out of that. To each his own.

My husband and I had an argument about raking leaves today. We already raked them out to the curb once. We just found out today that the second leaf pickup is tomorrow. Granted, it was a really nice day and I would have enjoyed raking the leaves. But I aready had plans for a month. And I intended on sticking to the plan of visiting with my family. My husband had a complete panick attack because no one wanted to help him rake the leaves. I argued that it didnt matter! We already raked the majority of them. A few leaves was not going to hurt anything. He raked them himself and I promised to help finish in the morning . It is 4 am right now! I am a night shifter. I don't want to rake leaves in the morning! I need sleep before I work tonight. I believe there are just some things more important then raking the leaves! ... and some people mentioned leaf blowers... I hate the sound of them when I am trying to sleep during the day! Noise pollution is what they are! Sometimes I could swear people are standing outside my window with a leaf blower!