In article ,
"Give 'em Hell Harry" wrote:

I started to rake the leaves from my yard yesterday when I noticed that the
trees were still about half full of leaves ready to fall.

None of my neighbors have raked the leaves from their lawn and since I live
on the end of a cul-de-sac, I will get most of their autumn junk in a few
weeks anyway.

I figure about the first of January the trees will be bare and most of my
neighbor's leaves will be in my yard.

Put the tools away and spent the rest of the day listening to Christmas
carols and enjoying dozing in front of the fireplace.

January will be here soon enough.

No such thing as too many leaves. If I had vast extras I'd build a broad
chickenwire cage for them & pile them in it as high as possible & keep
'em wet, because when after a few months these compact down into pure
wholesome black leafmold, it's just one of the most beautiful topcoating
composts looking like the richest black loam, suppressing weeds while
feeding everything intentionally planted, & a great aid to the beneficial
microorganisms that produce nitogren (there's not much nitrogen in
leafmold but it encourages the best nitrogen production by
microorganisms). As it stands, I have only a few extra leaves, which I
stuff in a big black bags & hide way back under the porch, where they'll
turn to good leafmould without attention. There's never enough & I always
end up having to buy some fully composted steer manure when topcoating
gardens; it would be so great to have endless amounts of free homemade
leafmold, but a huge bag of leaves breaks down into only a little
leafmold. The majority of the leaves I sweep off the grass directly into
gardens as natural winter mulch which keeps down weeds by turning to
leafmold in-situ by spring (in dryer zones they might take longer to break
down in situ). I only have to be careful not to permit them to smother
tiny things, & to knock them out of our undergrowth shrubs; but the leaves
definitely keep weeds down to a minimum, & perhaps because we have rainy
autumns & winters, they do not blow away from the places I've spread them
through. By spring the most that remains of them are a few leaf-skeletons
from the largest leaves. I use exceedingly little artificial fertilizer,
but by keeping the leaves & chopped-up prunings as mulch, nutrients are
not much removed from the woodland-style gardens.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/