I remember leaves falling precipitously in Quebec during September when the sugar maples create a blazing mosaic of gold and ruby on forest floors. But the first snow blots over the colors as it quietly descends layer on layer with few melts over the next months. But here in south-east Virginia fall doesn’t arrive until late October, and then comes on hesitantly, one tree species shedding after another until Christmas, and snow is a stranger.
Fall is the first love of Quebecoises, but they have more passionate ardor for the first cold kiss of winter when their skis are brought down from attics to wax for the slopes and forest trails. Virginians love their long colorful season, although if you ask gardeners you might hear them groaning.
Lawns turn from greens to browns, and flower borders from dainty asters to crinkly blankets. It is the time to pull rakes out of garden sheds and turn on leaf blowers, which will roar for weeks around the neighborhoods. The red oaks keep their canopies until shortly before Christmas, and if I go outdoors after a windy night I have to tramp through leaves deep and crisp as cornflakes after a tremendous dump. Then the rake comes out again.
I estimate over 50 million leaves fall on our property. Only beech stays covered until spring buds nudge them off. Every species has its reason, except the human kind which has a perverse attitude to leaf fall.
Although the season is now long past, serried ranks of 40 gallon plastic bags still wait at the end of driveways to be carted off to the county dump. Trash to most people, they are bags of treasure to me.
The first neighbor looked puzzled when I asked for his bags, and then curled a smile. “Why sure. Go ahead and take my other trash and a dead animal too.” I didn’t ask others after that. I just threw their bags on the back of the truck, hoping they would be pleased to see an empty driveway.
I brought home 75 bags of dry leaves which, on average, weighed 40 lb (18 kg) for a total of some 3,000 lb or 1.5 short/ US tons (slightly less in Imperial tons). Wondering how many leaves I collected, I counted a sample of 1,000, which weighed about 1 lb. According to rough estimates, my haul rounded up to 3 million leaves, but that didn’t include the countless number I raked in the yard. According to an agronomic library used by the Druid’s Garden to estimate chemical composition, I brought home 1,500 lb carbon, 48 lb calcium, 30 lb nitrogen, 7 lb magnesium, and 3 lb each of sulfur, potassium, and phosphorus. Why, you might ask would a leaf millionaire want more? And what makes him a scavenger?
Taking away leaves has the same impact as cropping. It depletes the topsoil of precious minerals and removes carbon captured by trees during the warm months. Returning their goodness replenishes the soil by making chocolate humus. It avoids the need to buy chemical fertilizers to feed the ground and mulch to protect flower beds because dry leaves look attractive, and of course natural, in a woodland garden.
In the right places they are beneficial in every way, and over time they restore soil fertility where it was impoverished by hungry crops, like tobacco which was grown here as a former plantation. Leaves that are not spread around are pressed into leaf bins and baskets to make leaf mold, but they are placed far from tree roots that would try to suck out the nutrients. Black walnut is the only unwelcome species because every part contains toxic juglone.
If practical arguments leave you cold then consider picking a leaf for meditation. To paraphrase William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence: “To see a world in a bunch of leaves, And heaven in a green leaf…” Leaves capture carbon, exhale oxygen, transpire water, recycle minerals, provide food and shelter for the “little creatures who run the world” (E.O. Wilson), and of course they feed nations with nutritious chow and inspire us with color.
Next Post: My Hunt for a Hellbender