If the leaves are covering your grass, and you want to keep your lawn,
you will want to rake up the leaves on a regular basis. My husband
tried the "wait until all the leaves fall and then rake" tactic the
first year in our house. The leaves smothered the grass and we had no
lawn to speak of the next spring. Now we rake up the leaves each week,
or just run the lawn mower over the yard, set on mulch mode.

Heidi

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.