Tackling the blessings and curses of spent foliage
The word from the UN’s Climate Change Conference, a.k.a. COP27, at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt was not quite as grim as it has been in previous years, but, solemn vows to clean up our act not-withstanding, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to rise, the average global temperatures is still on an upward trajectory, and the world’s weather patterns have not ceased marching to a new and increasingly wonky, to say nothing of catastrophe-in-ducing, drummer.
Still, as we gather togeth-er around the Thanksgiv-ing table—the ability to still gather is reason enough for thanks-giving—we are not without the greatest gift of all: hope. The recent elec-tions in this country and elsewhere showed that there is a measure of sanity in the air and the ballot box, and even though Voldemort, er, the Don, is attempting a dark resurrection, voters now seem inclined to reject climate- and other human-rights deniers. To this trend, I can only sing Hallelujah... and add a verse asking the Almighty to look down on this beleaguered planet and send the ultimate denial to Vlad the Impaler and his hopefully hellbound band of war criminals, along with their apologists.
It would also be nice to have a bit more of that Au-gust-in-November beach weather, or, at least, a stretch of genuine Indian Summer, um, sorry, old habits die hard, Second Summer, to usher in Turkey Day and make the Fellman Football Field nice and warm for our Annual Game. But the cooler heads that prevailed in the mid-terms—more or less, since Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert somehow retained their seats at the con-gressional table—appear to be in evidence in the weather forecast, which finally fea-tured a chill deep enough to bring frostbite to the uncov-ered and doom to the toma-toes and other tender plants.
In a nod to what remains climatologically inevitable on the ridge, I hauled the flannel, the long underwear, and the gloves out of storage; took down the screens; cleaned the wood stove flues; stuffed flex-ible caulk in every less-than-perfect window; drained the rain barrels; and catalogued the last of the flowers and their pollinators. This year, the floral honors went to a pair of hydrangea panicles, several corydalis blossom congregations, the last of the late asters, the remarkably hardy dandelions—these may yet be blooming in Decem-ber, if we’re spared deep cold and snow—and a handful of holly flowers that the warm spell somehow tricked into opening six months ahead of schedule. These were visited by the last of the honeybees, a few house-fly-like dipter-ans, and a scattering of tiny insects I haven’t yet been able to identify. (Putting a name on these and a raft of other not-yet-determined critters, from flower flies to fungi, is one of my primary winter projects.)
Then there’s the bound-less appetite of the stoves: the Quadra-fire in the base-ment, and the Jotul in the liv-ing room. In terms of hunger, these are our teenagers, and I’m forever attempting to keep them well fed. Thank the Lord and my medical team, I’m back to being able to wield a chain saw. I still have a good supply of wood to cut, and, Praise be, I was cleared to swing a splitting axe, so I no longer need to worry about that classic line from “John Henry”—the one in which the steel-drivin’ man dies with a hammer in his hand—becom-ing both the metaphorical and literal truth. Perhaps I should
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When I and my Y-chromoasionalsomes got home, I started in
benefitson my other long-term, stubstoriesbornly manual task: raking up
puzzlethe leaves. With the exception
ally allof the evergreens, pines to
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nd and a collection of
at www.young beeches, who apparently haven’t lived long enough to develop confidence in their ability to grow new greenery annually and thus retain their foliage through the winter, most of the local trees and shrubs have sent their leaves packing. The attachment points are now sealed with a kind of leak-proof botanical wax and next year’s buds are protected against whatever winter decides to unleash. All the foliage on the forest floor is ready to be food for worms, mushrooms, bacteria, and any other recycling service that nature provides. Everything is going according to plan.
Well, nature’s plan— which is not quite in accordance with what we humans might have in mind. As the Naturalist looks over his domain, which, according to his property deed, entails a little more than three acres, most of it heavily forested, he sees both a woodland buried in proper leaves and a modest lawn, gardens, and a long, gravel driveway improperly covered in spent, brown foliage. Given my upbringing in the suburbs of Cranston, my default reaction to this dendrological exuberance is to grab the rake and restore order and respectability to those parts of the estate that I’m trying to keep from going native.
I know this sounds like a contradiction in terms for a naturalist, this one in particular, but for practical purposes, we really need the driveway to be kept clear—it’s gravel and permeable, so we’re at least minimizing run-off—and a functioning lawn is required to maintain the health of our septic system. I guess I could do without Naturalist-crafted gardens and just take my delight and soul-sustenance from the floral and green horticulture that nature provides, but there are some siren songs to which I can’t help but listen. The urge to garden is one of them.
Over the years, I’ve also listened to what has become a raging debate about the proper way to practice the soil arts, and one of the prime topics under constant discussion is what to do with all those leaves. Certainly what not to do is what I did in my youth, which was to follow the dictates of suburban practice and dump all that foliage by the side of the road, then set it ablaze. Mea culpa, I loved the smell of burning leaves in the fall, and I refused, for a while, to believe that there was any harm in temporarily enshrouding the home turf in an immolated-foliage haze that contributed vast outpourings of climate-altering carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
We now know better, but there’s genuine disagreement over the best and most ecologically responsible way to deal with this blessing or curse... take your pick. One strident school of practitioners suggests simply doing nothing more than running a mulching mower over the leaves, turning the foliage into smaller bits, and making it easier for nature to take its recycling course. This is indeed a great idea... if you have a large enough mower to handle the deciduous output and said mulcher is not itself contributing fossil fuel emissions to the overall problem.
I don’t have the proper tools. The covering of leaves could smother my lawn and gardens. Watching a blanket of leaves slowly become soil and bury my driveway gravel is not the best course of action, um, inaction, for our comings and goings, so, since I just don’t like leaf blowers, I grab the rake and happily assemble the leaves into piles. If I have a partner in foliage crime handy, we’ve been know to jump into our work, after which we rake all that pleasure into containers that we dump in the woods for nature to process.
With good weather and more energy, the lawn may be cleared for football. If the job isn’t quite done, we’ll play anyway, working up a proper appetite for the feast and, of course, the natural history holiday gift-list suggestions that will soon arrive. Happy Thanksgiving!