neighbors and being lazy with leaves!

[pacrosby]

You're taking a natural material that will decay fairly quickly.....

Leaves decay "quickly"? Whose leaves? Where? What's your definition of quickly? I still have leaves that I never managed to get out from behind our air conditioner that have been there for years

 

[mjkacmom]

Up until a few years ago, it was the town's policy that leaves were to be put on the curb, unbagged, and the down would come and pick them up. Now, they have to be brown-bagged, and put on the curb (no plastic bags).

OP, are there any rules where you live regarding leaves? I can't imagine anyone putting them on the street if there is no pick up.

 

[eliza61]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are too lazy to pick up their leaves and put them in either a bag or trash can! They just plop them on the curve, and don't even wet them down.

Therefore, they all come blowing into other peoples yards! My mom's house has one tiny tiny pear tree, yet we get a massive amount of the lazy neighbors leaves. Barely ANYONE contains them. My mom is the nice one who makes sure they are all bagged up or put in a can at least!

Today I was being a nice daughter and went over and decided to pick up the newest bunch. I used her handheld leaf blower/suck up thing (sucks and mulches at the same time) and it took me nearly TWO hours to do just our front yard which isn't that big.

Anyone else deal with this?

Just a fyi, in my township you don't bag leaves and we definitely can't put them in a bag. My township has leaf collection days, begininng next week, you move your leaves to the curb and the township comes around and sucks them up.

It will pass.

 

[StacyMarie]

We have lazy neighbors on both sides. We've raked 3 times so far. We take care of our lawn and don't want a mess after the snow melts. Our neighborhood is full of oak trees. The leaves last forever and don't decompose. Like I said, our neighbors are lazy but they're also the ones who only mow once or twice a summer. It's terrible but usually a phone call to the city takes care of that problem!

 

[eliza61]

Count me in as "lazy." Of all the demands on my time, raking leaves is at the bottom of the list. If that gets my neighbor's knickers in a twist, oh well, it's his blood pressure, not mine.

LOL. We use to leave it as a chore for my sons but now that they are in college, it's way down on my to-do list also. Luckily almost all the neighbors have leaves and this is one thing we simply just "let go".
My neighbors are great folks so if the worst thing they do is let their leaves blow around, I'm cool with it.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

We usually rake and bag but we mulched them with the mower this year. I think I liked that better. Our house is right next to the storm drain, and we don't want it clogged, so we gotta do something wit them.

Also, I never heard the term "Devil strip" before, so I looked it up.

 

[Disney Doll]

We mulch them with the mower a few times. Gives a little back to the soil.

Then nearer to the end of leaf season we blow them to the curb & the town picks them up.

None of my neighbors do the "your leaves, my leaves" thing. We have 4 big trees surrounding our house...2 are the neighbors and 2 are ours. We couldn't just leave the leaves because they'd be piled 3 feet deep in my yard if we did that.

Last week before the storm DH blew the leaves out of the beds and onto the lawn. Plus there were leaves on the lawn. The depth of the leaves was probably about 1-1.5 feet. I kept running over them with the mulching mower, so they were chopped very fine, but I couldn't leave those leaves unmuched on my lawn....we'd have no grass, they would clog the sewers, it would be a mess.

 

[Andtototoo]

Because of the way the wind blows, we get a ton of leaves and far worse, snow from other houses.

We have one small deciduous tree on our property and we filled seven huge leaf bags with leaves just from the front yard alone. Typically when it snows, for example, about 6 inches, our neighbor across the street will have a nearly bare driveway while we'll have 2-3 feet in ours.

 

[3boymthr]

Wow! Towns still come by and pick up the leaves. The things I learn on the DIS.

In our area, towns do not pick up leaves, in fact, it is strictly forbidden to include lawn/yard waste in with the trash. All lawn and yard waste must be composted, either in your own compost pile or in the town's compost pile. You are responsible for getting the leaves/yard waste to the Town's compost pile and you must have a sticker in order to use the compost pile.

Nor can I imagine leaving leaves to just decompose. Of course, we live in an area where people have a ton of leaves. We raked the front yard yesterday - where we have one tree. The kids hauled off 10 tarp loads. We've yet to start on the back yard or driveway. But I anticipate another 30 tarp loads - maybe more because of all the leaves that blew into the driveway during Sandy.

I also had to laugh about complaining about neighbor's leaves. Our driveway is "recessed" into the ground with retaining walls all around. Half the leaves in the neighborhood plus all the ones from the woods behind our house and the empty lot between our house and the neighbor's house end up in our driveway. It would take me longer to sort out who the leaves belong to than it does just to rake them up.

 

[Pooh2]

My neighbor is a young guy who does not own a rake. He has two huge oaks hanging over my front yard so I pick the leaves off my lawn. It never occurred to me to throw them back into his yard! Does this effect neighborly relations??

 

[OceanStateKelly]

DH blows them in the woods

 

[themilesfamily]

We have a lot of kids in the neighborhood who use raking as an after-school money-earning job. When a kid comes to the door, we pay him or her their rate and they rake the leaves to the curb. The city comes around and collects them.

As for the your-leaves, my-leaves business -- that's not something I stress out over. Nor do I pay attention to who rakes and who doesn't. It's just not something I notice or care about.

 

[Pigeon]

I would far rather see people's leaves blowing around than to think about the wasted energy and listen to the noise of those stupid leaf blowers. I hate those things.

 

[HippieChickadee]

The joys of living in a neighborhood.

Around here they can't be bagged because, as someone else said, the town comes and sucks the leaves up. They don't seem to have a set schedule so the leaves could sit there for a week or more, or an hour. I'd need a video camera and software to slow down the footage so I could make sure all the "correct neighbors" got "their leaves" back...

 

[nhpooh]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are too lazy to pick up their leaves and put them in either a bag or trash can! They just plop them on the curve, and don't even wet them down.

Therefore, they all come blowing into other peoples yards! My mom's house has one tiny tiny pear tree, yet we get a massive amount of the lazy neighbors leaves. Barely ANYONE contains them. My mom is the nice one who makes sure they are all bagged up or put in a can at least!

Today I was being a nice daughter and went over and decided to pick up the newest bunch. I used her handheld leaf blower/suck up thing (sucks and mulches at the same time) and it took me nearly TWO hours to do just our front yard which isn't that big.

Anyone else deal with this?

OMG! I have two neighbors like this! The rest of us pickup all our leaves and put them in the soft waste bags, and CLOSE the tops of them. One neighbor blows the leaves off of his driveway into the street, guess where those leave end up, YUP in our yard!

 

[nhpooh]

My neighbor cuts off any branches from my tree that reaches over the fence. Any leaves that the wind takes over the fence are thrown back in my yard. I'm not sure how he separates leaves from my tree and his tree though.

Whenever I'm wondering my back yard and look up at my tree with the branches crudely cut off at the property line, I pick a leaf and throw it over the fence

LOL


Now I don't blow the leaves back, I just pick them up! I would love to do that sometime, but really if everyone picks up the leaves in there yard it would help everyone else. That's all I am asking, weather there from YOUR tree or MINE just pick them up!!!

 

[ccgirl]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people are too lazy to pick up their leaves and put them in either a bag or trash can! They just plop them on the curve, and don't even wet them down.

Therefore, they all come blowing into other peoples yards! My mom's house has one tiny tiny pear tree, yet we get a massive amount of the lazy neighbors leaves. Barely ANYONE contains them. My mom is the nice one who makes sure they are all bagged up or put in a can at least!

Today I was being a nice daughter and went over and decided to pick up the newest bunch. I used her handheld leaf blower/suck up thing (sucks and mulches at the same time) and it took me nearly TWO hours to do just our front yard which isn't that big.

Anyone else deal with this?

Yup. I deal with it. To be honest, I don't really know whose yard exactly the leaves are coming frome. I figure it's just part of living in a neighborhood. The neighbor across from me lives on a hill. All of their leaves seem to blow across the street to my house. I'm sure they blow from others yards too. We still haven't picked up any leaves because they are not done falling. I'm sure some of mine blow to other's yards too. We don't pick them up until most have fallen as we only want to do it once.

 

[torinsmom]

Everyone around me has lots of mature trees, so we have no idea whose leaves are whose. My next door neighbor does sustainable agriculture, so he takes whatever leaves people want to get rid of. I have a blower/mulcher, so I mulch, bag them up and put them in his yard.