You’d think after Monday’s record breaking one and a half inches of rain, the lawn would green up nicely. Fact is, that gully washer only made things less green. Strange that this time of year the lawn can green up by day, but come daybreak the next, the green is nowhere to be found. Yes, the annual “leaf” battle royal is in full contest these days. The big backyard maple is shedding its summer foliage, spewing its leafy attire as indifferently as it donned it last spring. Of course it’s this annual process that gives the season its name: Fall. I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary regarding the origin
Yes, it’s “faule of leaf” I’m complaining about here. Actually not so much the fall—gravity grips us all—the resulting cover-up is the problem. You can’t let a tree load of leaves smother the lawn in the winter. Bad things will happen, would happen, I’m sure—although I’m puzzled as to the nature of the consequences. If the leaves are wet and matted, which is usually the case, it’s out with the rake and the scraping begins, continues, until the fiery, downed foliage is piled up and hauled away and the green beneath is visible again. Dry leaves I deal with the lazy man’s way: mulched up and vacuumed into the power mower’s bagger. This fall, I’ve been lucky so far: only one session with the wheelbarrow and rake.
Just as the unfurling of spring buds takes times, so does the shedding of the adults. It would be nice if the task were not so prolonged; if the branches and twigs would release their charges all at once; if the flow of sap ceased instantly at the tap; if the grand old maple shed its raiment in one grand cascade of color. But no, the process is always drawn out: green lawn at night, a gardener’s delight…red yard at dawn, what’s become of the lawn, week after week.
In its sapling days the fall gales cleared the lawn of the maple’s leaves, but those days are long gone. Later, the leaf bounty was such that the kids could frolic in the crispy heaps and piles of color. Sometimes when a child plunged into a raked pile, the disturbed leaves emitted an unleaf-like odor. After all, it was the family dog’s backyard, too.
When you think about it, each leaf represents the universal cycle of life: from bud, to leaf, and then in a flush of color, the soft release and return to the earth. Born again into the air, solitary, its one and only flight, each leaf makes a final lonely journey. And year after year, the parent tree must grieve a host of children. Rake in hand, mine is a grief of a different nature.
I must give the leaves their due, however. Not only do they provide welcome backyard shade from a summer day’s heat, but become a leafy coverlet also for the dahlias and other vulnerable landscape plants come the inevitable winter days when the temperatures dip into single digits. Each barrow or bagful of leaves I haul to the dahlia patch and deposit strategically between the hills. After I cut and remove the canes, I will return with the rake and carefully mulch each hill with a mound of leaves. Come spring, after the danger of deep frosts has passed, I’ll rake the mulch from the hills into the rows and till it under: good leaf mold to enhance the garden soil.
A moment’s interlude: a brief leaf elegy composed by that punctuation/case insensitive iconoclast sometime painter turned poet, e.e.cummings:
L(A
L
E
A
F
F
A
L
L
S)
ONE
L
I
N
E
S
S
The leaves continue their relentless earthbound tumble, each its own solitary one act play. Leaves, please, leave me alone…. Some releaf, please! Where’s the rake? Uhhhh! Leave us now get to work.
Print this post
No comments:
Post a Comment