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| I recently got a very reasonable question from my lovely blog friend Chris, along the lines of: why don't we just have the older boys pick up all the oak leaves? Wouldn't the oak mite problem then be solved? No leaves,
no mites, right? Well, I'm going to try to answer that. It has to do
with the massive quantities of leaves... and the wind. Here you can see
our house and some of our oak trees. Most of the neighbours on our street have several oak trees as well. The people on the streets behind us had houses built well after 1964 and I think they wised up and decided during the building process that planting trees that can get over a hundred feet tall and shed incessantly are probably not the way to go. If you make this picture larger, you'll see our neighbour also is trying to keep up with the leaf dump... but you can't quite ever keep up in the fall. They're older people who hire out all their work, too... and it still isn't really ever done because as you work? More leaves fall and/or blow over from other properties. |
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| Well, here's our side yard. The wind blows about and makes odd bare spots and piles. In that corner it's about two feet deep and walking through the fence area, the leaves are packed about a foot deep. |
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| Keep in mind, D did all our leaves on Tuesday. It's Sunday now. Given that, you can see where oak mites are a huge problem in this part of the country. |
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| Our backyard neighbours like to do their leaves on the weekends. So on Tuesday, we looked brilliant and they looked a mess. Now the situation is reversed. |
OK... that's a shit load of leaves! No wonder you don't bother picking them up too often. My solution? Chop down the trees and replace with deciduous trees! I know ... you probably LOVE your trees and would never think of chopping them down, whereas I WOULD! *smiles*
ReplyDeleteit's a problem alright, the only time I've ever seen that many fallen oak leaves is here in the Adelaide Hills around the Stirling/Crafers area where there are many oak trees.
ReplyDelete@Chris; oak trees are deciduous...perhaps you meant evergreens? They also drop leaves, but in smaller quantities and all year round.
Chris: River's right, the trees drop their leaves for a few months/year and the rest of the time provide lovely shade and (invisible but beneficial) breatheable air.
ReplyDeleteRiver: when we first moved here, we didn't realise you HAVE to keep up with the leaves as best you can. We let a month or so go in the back yard because we tried to keep up with the front yard and make it look perfect... and literally in that time, it got to the point where you could wade about and lose a small child.