For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 03, 2008

I hated raking leaves as a kid, my parents had two fruitless Mulberries. Fortunately all of my trees are palms and evergreens. Go non shedding trees.

Why can’t humans just leave the natural mulch where God puts it. Leaves do not need to be raked.

Smug husband and mind-reading wife!!

Good advice Gweedo. I’ll do that too. :-)

Do not need to rake the leaves on the grasses while more leaves fall down from the trees. Just wait till all of the leaves on the trees become empty and then, go ahead to rake more leaves on the grasses. Does that make sense to you?

I’d love to leave the leaves from the giant oak tree in my front yard, but then my neighbors would complain and call the county on me.

What I do is use my leaf blower and blow them into the street, the cars run over them and then the rain washes them away. No bags, no problems.

In “the good ole days”, you raked the leaves (ELM tree leaves…try to find those now) into a big pile at the curb. Then you burned them. Great autumn smell~burning leaves.

I thought that if you didn’t rake the leaves, they could actually like suffocate the grass or something. I’ve seen lawns that turned brown because the owners didn’t rake the leaves.

unfortunately, not raking leaves can make neighbors think that you are neglecting your duties as a homeowner.Especially in the suburbs where everything is supposed to be perfect!!!

Leave the leaves on the ground..when you have a nice wet snow, go outside and you can roll all the leaves up in medium size snow balls, PLUS, you’ll have the only yard with no snow covering the ground.

Gweedo, Dutch Elm is the disease, not the type of tree. No, Elms didn’t really start to disappear until ’60s. There are still a few left.

And alexielrieth, it wasn’t leaves that killed those lawns.

As to the neighbors, if they don’t like it, tough.

You can also run over the leaves with the mower (without the bag attached) to give your lawn nice, ground-up mulch (and make the neighbours think that you did something). However, that uses up gas (unless you use a push-mower, but that doesn't really chop them up very finely).

ok I live in Florida our trees for the most part don’t shed. So this may sound stupid. I thought the grass went dormant in winter.

I only rake up the leaves that accumulate in my driveway and up against the woodwork on the house. The wind tends to clear away most of the ones on the lawn.