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Remember, as a kid, creating huge piles of leaves in the fall and running like crazy to jump into them only to flail all around in them with your friends and then doing the same thing all over again?
Well, fall is here now and I rarely see kids doing that any more. Perhaps they are too busy indoors with their gameboys and TV programs. Matter of fact I do not see a lot of kids outdoors nowadays in my neck of the woods unless it is in organized sports down at the park or at the athletic field at our local school. Boys in blue, we spent so much time outdoors simply because there was not a lot to do indoors back in the “olden days”.
What I do see in the fall, besides the wonderful paint brush strokes of Mother Nature’s palette, are many people out raking up their leaves and putting them into heavy duty, extra strong black bags to go to the land fill and sit there for several decades or perhaps more.
I understand that a thick layer of leaves, especially in the southern states, might impede the sunlight from getting in to shine on one’s grass, but really besides good exercise of raking leaves, does one have to use those plastic bags?
Nature takes care of its own self. Leaves fall and bio-grade themselves down to create the nutrients that go back into the ground thus creating another layer of top soil and feeding the root system of the tree. That is what usually occurs unless you happen to live in a huge forest and have such a massive thick layer of leaves that this won’t happen.
Then there are those who invest in leaf blowers that use either electricity with a very long extension cord or expensive gasoline and create tremendous noise pollution except to the user if he or she is savvy enough to wear ear plugs or those protective ear muffin things. Where do all these leaves get blown to, the curb? In my day the wind blew most of our leaves away and the wind still works that way on our property.
Raking your lawn has some good benefits since it tends to remove the thatch from your grass as you also remove the leaves and raking your leaves to add to your mulch pile or compost pile has some environmental and organic gardening benefits also. But just raking them up and putting them into big, black plastic bags is not being very “green”!
Consider just getting on your riding lawn mower or pushing your hand mower through your leaves to mulch them up into smaller pieces that will bio-degrade faster or blow away faster. Think of all the money you will save on big, black plastic bags and all the space you will save in your community landfill!
“Tread the Earth Lightly” and in the meantime… May your day be filled with…Peace, Light and Love,
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries and to take a walk through her pictorial garden or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Many of her articles written for Greenthumbarticles have paintings she has created of the subject and they can be seen at her “How to Do It” site. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Many of her paintings are sold internationally and many of her works of art have been reproduced on note cards, post cards and other functional items and you can get Giclee prints of her artwork starting as low as $11.89 Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books, art, etc. go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my sites.”
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