November 25, 2017 – Gold Gingko leaves

        One day I was out shopping and my husband was out in the yard sitting in the fall sun, enjoying the quite.  I found a couple cold beers and joined him. 

He points at the tree on the back lawn. He calls that tree half a dozen incorrect names and each time I tell him what it is, but he doesn’t remember.  So, now he identifies it as: “Your tree – what is it called?” 

“Crepe Myrtle.”

“Yeah, all the leaves came down and made a perfect circle right round it.”  He said admiring it from our vantage point. 

He was right. We’d had a killing frost and the leaves had turned and dropped off in a neat circle.  The small leaves had turned a dark olive green and curled a bit as they dried and were pretty in their own way.

Later that week my Gingko tree turned a gorgeous gold and every time I passed my kitchen window, I paused and watch leaves drop straight down.  Again, there was no wind, which is unusual for us.  Two days later, not a leaf was on the ginkgo tree. I went out to rake up just the circular patch of golden leaves that had dropped and layered like a gold leathery carpet.  It truly was beautiful to look at, but I didn’t want it smothering and killing the lawn.

This summer when I did the brick paver patio near the back of my house abutting one of my raised vegetable gardens, I had 900 pounds of sand dropped off with the bricks.  The sand was in a large white tuff-type fabric with handles on it and was dropped by a forklift at the far end of my driveway.  That square “giant” shopping type bag held 9 cubic feet of sand.  When I emptied it, I kept it to cart leaves from the lawn to my leaf pile or my compost pile instead of a tarp.

I noticed the Ginkgo leaves were fresh still, not having lost their moisture and they felt just as leathery and waxy as if I had plucked them from the tree.  So, they were heavy to rake and scoop up. I started raking from the tree in a circle outwards six feet or so feet making a circular mound.  Then I came in from the lawn side of the perfect fallen leaf circle and raked inward so that I had a leaf ridge in a circle around the tree.  Then I scooped them up and plopped them in that re-purposed sand bag and drug it across the lawn to the leaf pile to empty.  I made a second trip and was done.   I love that bag – they should market the bag for leaf raking.

Then, the next day, more sunshine and still no wind, I went down to the front corner and the leaves were completely off the sugar maple tree.  It being near the road, the leaves had drifted not in a complete circle, but inward a bit from the road traffic in sort of an oval. The maple leaves had fallen over time and they were bone dry, curled and extremely light.  I took 5 bags of maple leaves to the leaf pile.  When the 9 cubic feet bag was full of dried maple leaves, it was so light weight – felt more like air.  I over stuffed it, tamped it down and had the added advantage of a Velcro flap cover on the re-purposed sand-bag to close it. 

So, my drag to the leaf pile was fast and I didn’t lose any leaves.  I’ll be saving that bag and using it again and again. 

I suggest if you can find a friendly bricklayer, see if you can’t mooch one of those empty sand bags from their next completed job and use it for fall leaf raking.  You will simply love it.   

Happy leaf raking.