When my wife and I moved to Fort Collins from back east, we’d squint up at the searing sunshine and ask ourselves, “Is it even safe to live here?”
The Colorado sun is a force, crisping our garden and turning our skin cells into potential cancer factories. The only things protecting us: A massive American elm to the south of our backyard, two Green Ash trees to the north, and a soaring Silver Maple to the west. Their leaves are a lifesaver: for our garden, and for the human beings who tend it.
But now those leaves have fallen. And our yard isn’t looking great.
The Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson wrote: “Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground.” Alas, Gibson died of ovarian cancer last summer. So now the poet is no longer around to call out the leaves as they rush toward a lover’s embrace with our lawns.
Perhaps you hate that big Autumnal hug. Leaves that are peep-worthy along the Peak to Peak Highway in October are lawn litter in November. Your fastidious neighbor gives them, and you, the stink-eye, and your hands will blister with every sweep of the rake. Or, worse yet, maybe you’re wielding the leaf blower to whine them into piles when you’d rather be watching the Broncos.
Spring forward, fall nuisance.
There is a better way. And as a lazy person, I embraced it immediately. The National Wildlife Foundation has launched “Leave the Leaves Month,” encouraging each of us to, well, leave well enough alone.
Don’t rake. Don’t blow. Don’t bag. Just chill.
Your fastidious neighbor may judge you for it. But butterflies, bees, birds, and beasts will love that leafy mess you call your yard. For critters, clutter is a combination of supermarket, shelter, obstetrics ward, and graveyard. It’s where the natural cycle rounds the bend from death into rebirth. And all that can happen on your lawn.
When I first read about “Leave the Leaves” a couple of years ago, I thought it was permission to ignore them entirely. Not so much. As the Bible tells us in Luke 12:48: “To whom mulch is given, mulch shall be required.”
Or, at least I think that’s what the Bible verse says.
If your yard is surrounded by trees, like mine is, an untended leaf carpet could kill everything underneath it. But instead of stripping the lawn bare, I mulch it. Out with the leaf bag, in with our electric lawnmower, which turns a fall problem into a spring promise.
I’ve fired up my lawnmower five times in the last three weeks, to mulch the fallen leaves into free fertilizer. Plus, it’s an ASMR treat to roar around the yard productively crunching dried organic matter.
When I say “mulch,” I’m not talking about that bagged and dyed shredded bark from the hardware store. That stuff is death itself.
But leaf mulch is a transitional stage, leading from the inert to awesome, decay to delight.
Yes, it’s way too early to be thinking about daffodils. But the bulbs are down there, anyway, ticking away like organic bombs that will burst into flowers. And those flowers wonder: Will a butterfly visit, and pollinate, when the time comes?
The leaves now melting into my lawn say yes. A thousand times yes.
Andrea Gibson was right: Leaves love the ground, and the ground loves them back. So why banish them to the yard-waste bin, when they can do so much good, right where they fell? Tell your nosy neighbor to mind his own business while you lay the groundwork for spring.
