Fall Yard Cleanup

With the sun shining, the temperature in the upper 40's and rain and colder weather forecast for tomorrow, we worked on the leaves in our front yard after lunch. The leaves have really come down during the cold and snowy weather of the past couple weeks. In cleaning them up, we followed our usual procedure of blowing and raking them out into an open area and then "chopping" them up with the grass catcher off so the mower works like a mulcher. I then put the catcher on and go over the area again, doing more   chopping and picking them up. We dump them on an opened burlap bag which is the easiest way to carry them to the back yard and put them on this compost pile. We have a second pile like this and rotate between the two. What you see is about a 3 year accumulation of all the grass and leaf trimmings that we have removed from the yard. The second pile has matured compost and is older. Both are located next to the back yard fence and hidden from view by Lilac, Wigelia, and other shrubs. We haven't had any grass clippings nor leaves taken away from our place for the past 20 years. While there is work involved, it is easier then raking leaves and putting them in paper bags as some of our neighbors do; plus it's more Green to be recycling. Now we still have the back yard to do and don't have kids coming home from college to help as they did when we were back on Ridge Road.