Every once in a while I am glad my neighbors grow grass. Say what? Well for them to grow good grass they have to rake up all the leaves that fall from the big oak trees in their yard. They very conveniently (for me) put them in paper bags and line them up on the street ostensibly to be picked up by the county and hauled away.
When I was coming home from working with my friends on preparation for our annual winter solstice celebration yesterday I passed by a long line of bags full of brown gold waiting for me to pick them up today and use them to mulch my garden for the winter (should we have winter this year). It took me 3 trips to get all of them, 45 bags total. I laid some cardboard on the path and dumped a bag, laid the empty bag on the path, dumped another bag and so forth until I finally ran out of cardboard. Luckily at the Monastery where Robin works they have lots of cardboard so she brought some home so that I can finish the job in the morning.
I also spread the leaves among the broccoli and cabbages where they will begin to be broken down through the winter by my army of workers in the soil making nutrients available to the current and future crops. In the paths the cardboard and bags will help to smother the weeds so there will be less work for me to do next season. I was able to heavily cover about 2/3rds of my front food - not - lawn garden.
I sure hope the squirrels get to work on all the acorns or I will have the beginnings of an oak forest really soon.
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