neighbors and being lazy with leaves!

[rebeccaariel]

When I was a little kid, we loved to rake the leaves into piles and jump in them or make leaf forts. We had a loony neighbour who was convinced all our leaves would blow onto her property...that was three houses away. So she came in the middle of the night with a box and a rake and stole all our leaves.

Not completely relevant to this discussion but since we're talking about leaves and neighbours I thought I'd share my funny story lol

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

Our house is surrounded by huge maple trees at least 100 years old. Lots and lots of leaves! We have a mulching mower so we just run over all the leaves and they get chopped up and enrich the soil. We were ready to go out and mulch them when Hurricane Sandy blew through and blew them all away! No idea where they all ended up....

 

[happygirl]

We are rude, we never do anything with our leaves. They come and go. I'm happy that my neighbors are of the same minds they are leaves.

 

[Micca]

We don't rake, it's just too windy here. You could scarcely get the yard cleaned before more would blow in.

 

[marmalade]

We don't haven have a tree in our backyard but if we didn't rake the leaves every day we would have a few feet of leaves on the ground. We probably get an inch of leaves a day during fall. We have no choice but to clean them up.

I actually like the look of leaves on the ground, it is what makes fall fall.

 

[pacrosby]

In some places the trees, and thus leaves, are so numerous that you can't just leave them to turn into soil....unless you don't mind dead grass and endless mounds of leaves against the foundation, in and amongst the gardens etc. Where we live we really have no choice.

That said, my father is actually one of those who will rake the neighbors leaves back into their yard. Sounds crazy yes, but he's 83 and together with my 84 yo mother takes the time to repeatedly get out there and rake his leaves so why can't the guy who is 50 years younger do his part? It'd be one thing if he just didn't get them all and some blew over but this guy does NOTHING in his yard (and it shows....overgrown bushes, a lawn full of weeds etc.). I think it's hilarious that my father does that. Even at his age the guy's got gumption

 

[zoemurr]

You're taking a natural material that will decay fairly quickly, putting it in a material that will be around forever and putting it in a landfill? Seems very wasteful.

We have woods that back up to us and DH throws them there.. but he is not crazy about getting them all.

 

[HelenePA]

My whole neighborhood is lazy with leaves... my lawnmower is also a mulching mower so I just run them over and poof they are gone in the spring... I dont think I'll have to cut my grass again this year.. its way too wet out there now or they'd be gone before spring.

 

[tvguy]

I'm a good neighbor, all 7 trees in my yard are evergreens.
Needless to say, none of the leaves in my yard are from my trees.
Leaves are just now starting to turn color, it will be a while before they fall.
Folks around her don't usually rake until they are all off the trees.
We rake them and put them in our green waste cans. No other pickup is done, so blowing them into the street means they would stay there. Well, the county does say they try to sweep every street once a year with a street sweeper, but that's usually in July.

 

[ILoveToRun]

We too are a leave it family. Of course we will take them from the sidewalk and driveway but the leaves mostly just a become nutrients for our yard.

I'd like to point out though, we live in Oregon so the leaves are all wet all the time so they don't blow around.

 

[LBIJim]

Our house is surrounded by huge maple trees at least 100 years old. Lots and lots of leaves! We have a mulching mower so we just run over all the leaves and they get chopped up and enrich the soil. We were ready to go out and mulch them when Hurricane Sandy blew through and blew them all away! No idea where they all ended up....

One good thing from Sandy....it blew all the leaves from my father-in-law's yard to who knows where. But there's still a few trees with some leaves so eventually I will have to do some raking.

Years ago when I lived in a house in a wooded area I would only rake leaves twice: once in early November and once in early December. That's when the township would send around trucks to suck them up from the edge of the street. The neighbor lady was crazy, though. She would be out there practically every day with her blower. I didn't care if any of my leaves ended up on her yard. Since she obviously enjoyed blowing leaves so much, I figured I was giving her something fun to do.

Jim

 

[Shagley]

You're taking a natural material that will decay fairly quickly, putting it in a material that will be around forever and putting it in a landfill? Seems very wasteful.

We are required to put all of our leaves or other yard waste in specially marked containers or special yard waste bags that are made of thick paper that are biodegradable. We cannot mix it in with other garbage or put it in plastic garbage bags

Unfortunately our city does not come around and suck up our leaves out of the street, so if we want to rake (which we have to do because the leaves are too thick not to), we have to bag them or put them in containers to be picked up.

 

[dakcp2001]

Don't sweat the small stuff. Leaves are not that big a deal. Wind blows them around, who cares if some land in your yard. If this is the biggest problem you have, you are living a good life. I work full time nights, raking leaves is not a priority. I would like to steal leaf blowers and hoard them in my garage ince they wake me up, but hey whatever. Not that big a deal.

 

[Pigeon]

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.

 

[Disneychix]

I raked our front leaves on Saturday. We have one big Elm in the front that the 'city' put in years ago. Our neighbor just recently cut down their tree in the front and I've already heard about how now they just have 'our' leaves to rake. Because they examined all the leaves on the street and it's just our tree that blows the leaves on their lawn??
I did go the extra mile and raked up next to their house and driveway. I figured that was good enough.

 

[BearcatsFan]

We are in a semi-rural area that has no leaf collection. Our yards back up to a huge farm field.

Over the years, I have watched my neighbor pick up individual leaves, examine them to see what kind they are, and throw them back over the fence into our yard. She has gone so far as to call me to ask when we're coming over to rake up "our leaves". So last year, I called her over to the fence and showed her all the gigantic pine cones her huge pine trees were dropping into our yard. I offered her a rake. She asked how long the trees had been doing that, and I replied, "Oh ... ever since we moved in 10 years ago."

Oddly enough, all of "our leaves" that were in her yard got raked up with her own this year.

 

[zoo2tycoon]

At least your neighbor doesn't stack leaf bags (I mean big brown ones from Lowe's and 8 of them) in their back yard so you have to look at them. It is our kooky neighbor who hates our trees (post on that a few weeks back). He is doing this so we have to look at them....whatever. I am not going to do a thing. In the spring a fence or trellis is going up so I don't have to look at his yard.

Leaves come from all over....nature

Crazy people out there!

 

[Piper]

Uhhhh--if your leaves blow into a neighbor's yard----and s/he throws them back in your yard-----aren't they just going to blow into the neighbor's yard again??? I don't think leaves observe "keep off the grass" signs!

 

[ols386]

Well in my town we just rake them to the devil strip and the city comes with a big truck and sucks them up. You could always be like my neighbor; he blows all the leaves from my tree that fall in his yard back into my yard

Sometimes we feel like doing this, but we wouldn't do that. That just seems kind of trivial. Besides that, how does the neighbor know for a fact that ALL the leaves are yours? There could be some of his own mixed in there. (Unless it's just one lone tree.) LOL

 

[firecracker725]

When I was a kid, my mom used to make my sister and I rake the leaves in our grandmother's yard into a huge pile to burn. I just could not understand why we couldn't just let them stay on the ground. However, now we are living in an area with many mature deciduous trees, and I just have to have the leaves gone. They were getting into the house, and worse, we slipped on them when they were wet. Unfortunately, we cannot burn leaves in our city, so they're in bags at the curb.