People who rake the leaves

PizzamanIRL

My mother used to ask me to sweep the garden to clean up the dust/dirt that was stuck in the crevices around the garden's tarmac. I couldn't get my head around it. I was saying 'You want me to clean the outdoors? It's the outdoors, you can't keep it clean. It will be dirty again in a few days'

I kept giving her analogies to compare to what I was trying to say but she still wanted me to clean the fecking ground outside!

conorh91

Avalyn High Sweatshop wrote: »

A few things here. Firstly that item advocates mowing (shredding) leaves into the lawn. This is not leaving lawns strewn with full leaves that block light and is an accepted alternative to raking if the mower will mulch the keaves sufficiently.

I guess I just have a bugbear about people who are overly-precious about their lawns.

Have you never left a picnic blanket, or a kid's pool, or a tent, on a patch of grass for a while, and watched the grass turn yellow, and then back to a perfectly lush green? Have you never neglected to water your lawn through the occasional dry spell? If you have, you will have seen that the resilience of lawn grasses is enormous.

The idea that lawns cannot withstand a scattering of leaves on a windy day is bordering on the ludicrous.

I suppose you rush out at the first snowfall to clear your lawn of snow as well?

The Purveyor of Truth

I never bother with them myself. We have a paved driveway and I rather feel they give the place a nice sense of homeliness to be quite honest with you. Indeed, one of the reasons we purchased the property in the first place was it was in a nice leafy avenue. I must admit though, I do give instructions to the boy who runs errands for us that he must do his damnedest to keep the pool free of the darn things. One never fully knows when a nice day is upon us and so best to keep it clear just in case. I mean, who wants to have a little late night skinny dipping in a pool full of yuck. Talk about a ruiners.

BeerWolf

Leave the leaves alone and you kill off the grass and moss will be taking over...

It's to prevent people slipping on the driveway or outside the house and smacking their head off the ground a la yer man on the news who slipped on the ice that time.

BeerWolf

Tail Docker wrote: »

Rakes are for cissies. Backpack blowers are the bomb.

Blowers are bloody useless in Ireland when it's damp 24/7 in Autumn...

Tail Docker

BeerWolf wrote: »

Blowers are bloody useless in Ireland when it's damp 24/7 in Autumn...

Rubbish. You just need a bigger blower. Mine would blow the red off a ginger.

Sir Arthur Daley

Handiest thing to rake the leaves is the track machine and a grading bucket.

Teyla Emmagan

They disintegrate into muck, and then you're wading through muck which is far more annoying than doing a bit of raking.

John_Rambo

conorh91 wrote: »

I guess I just have a bugbear about people who are overly-precious about their lawns

You gotta love the curtain twitchers. Must be because you're from the countryside!

I'd say the wife's sick of you obsessing about you're neighbours so you came online to rant about them.

anncoates

anncoates wrote: »

Walking along the pavement once through piles of leaves and my friend stepped on a huge rat

Rake the fcukers I say.

Quelle horreur.

I feel weak now, knowing this is a possibility. I'll be tip-toeing through the leaves in future. I'm now staunchly pro-raking. If someone else does it, of course.

Tail Docker

Sir Arthur Daley wrote: »

Handiest thing to rake the leaves is the track machine and a grading bucket.

Let.it.go. It's unhealthy for you.:)

jimgoose

Is there some problem with a simple flamethrower? ?

--LOS--

Ours was definitely not a tree raking household but then I'm from the country so our lawns were hardy as ****

Also I have a degree in raking so I should know

FunLover18

Each to their own but fallen leaves have been blocking the grass from sun for thousands of years. It's nature it'll look after itself.

Raking leaves off pavements cause they get slippy, I get.

Bog Standard User

Autonomous wrote: »

The grass dies underneath the leaves.

actually you are wrong

the leaves are broken down and the trees & grass reabsorb the nutrients which they then use again to produce more leaves in the spring

WoollyRedHat

I remember having to rake leaves as a child and considered it as amounting to modern day slavery, what with that and being hit by a spoon(whip in olden times) for dubious reasons.

Miss Lizzie Jones

They are good for the compost pile.

Shenshen

Bog Standard User wrote: »

actually you are wrong

the leaves are broken down and the trees & grass reabsorb the nutrients which they then use again to produce more leaves in the spring

Might depend on the kind of leaves/ kind of tree they're coming from.
The ones we get on our lawn are blown in up the driveway, and the leaves are very thick and hard things. Not like your normal maple or oak leave that's all thin and crumbly when dried and dead, but more like leather.

When we moved into the house we live in at present, it was the middle of winter.
No leaves had been raked off the front lawns, as the house had been up for sale for a few months, with nobody living in it.
I thought I'd better leave the leaves where they are, to protect the grass underneath from frost or something.

Raked them up in springtime only to find that the grass had indeed died under them. We had quite a patchy lawn for the first 2 summers in our house, so now I'll be raking them every autumn.

Edit : Also, dead leaves have next to no nutrients in them. The tree re-absorbs everything it can out of them, which is why they die and fall off in the first place.

cloud493

Easy to slip on wet leaves so.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Bog Standard User wrote: »

actually you are wrong

the leaves are broken down and the trees & grass reabsorb the nutrients which they then use again to produce more leaves in the spring

Totally incorrect. Look at the ground under or near trees where leaves are not lifted. The grass dies back. Grassland and forestry do not compliment each other in nature. I have tended lawns, a wildflower meadow and a woodland and I can certainly see the difference. Also there are very few nutrients in fallen leaves.

John_Rambo

Bog Standard User wrote: »

actually you are wrong

the leaves are broken down and the trees & grass reabsorb the nutrients which they then use again to produce more leaves in the spring

Jaysus! I think we should do a nature walk for boardies that don't know the difference between woodland and pasture.