Great story. Good memories. However I still love my leaf blower. I wish we could still burn leaves. Loved the smell.
Sad.
5
Leaf blowers are perhaps useful in some professional applications. Otherwise their ubiquity is just a marketing triumph. This is made easier by our long pursuit of a life that seeks to replace any form of physical exertion with a motorized 'time saving' gadget.
As a landscaper for some time I never found a way to use a blower that could not be done just as quickly with a rake in the hands of a proficient person, except for clearing off a large area such as a ballfield with few obstructions.
As a human in thrall to nature I would never exchange the sensory rewards of a day steadily collecting leaves. The quiet itself is enough of a bonus. As Ms Renkl suggests, these leaves feed the life that any ecological gardener tries to preserve.
13
Love this. Poetic, evocative, meditative, and transcendent, it’s a warm tonic in these turbulent times.
13
Margaret always finds something we may overlook to help us appreciate the things that truly matter.
6
Charming but do those birds and crawly things etc a favor and don't rake. Let it all cook down through the winter let the mounds of leaves serve as homes and greenhouses and the natural blanket they excel at.
8
A nice metaphor for those who can afford gardens.
Beautiful essay. I live in a leafy neighborhood that's mostly been Republican. But we've elected a Democrat to our state house district last two cycles because his GOP opponents were leaf blowers. I don't like either kind, right wing blowhards or real leaf blowers. I'm a rake guy.
20
So much depends on lot size.
Hated leaf blowers when I was younger and had a small lot close in to Wash, DC. Older now and with a large lot with tall trees out in the country...
3
what a treat to come in after raking all morning on a nice Fall day to read all the thoughts on raking leaves after a usual early morning of reading the news about how all the evil things that are being done to our country and world.
more and more i ask myself why do leaders do such evil things to each others. to our planet, to our country, to everything we hold dear? they seem to have everything and yet want more. when is enough, enough? will the next war to end all wars be so successful it will extinguish all who started those wars?
will the leaves finally triumph?
13
I take my leaves into my flower beds for mulch and letting them insulate my bulbs. spring comes and the dirt is fed well and flowers grow far better and healthier
5
I assumed this was a political essay to remind the Dems to keep fighting. Completely enjoyed being transported back to my childhood in the Northeast where there is a fall and raking was a childhood chore. In the South the leaves turn brown and fall off. Ugly
1
Yes, I rake leaves and have for the twenty plus years that I have lived in the 'burbs. I filled in a large, former goldfish pond in my backyard with these leaves-three feet deep and fifteen feet wide. Now that pond is gone only the leaves turned soil remain. I also turn the remaining leaves into composted and mulched soil which is a very happy thing to do as I watch my perennials, azaleas, rhododendruns, and forsythia enjoy this great aeration and eat their nutrients. And oh yes, watch the earthworms eating into the pile of leaves all year long. Best to you and your drinking in nature as it is.
7
Nice voice.
1
A most cheery,brilliant essay Ms. Renki. Am leaving my backyard this year full of now fallen leaves from giant oak and walnut trees. Let 'em rot! Am doing something good for the sake of the planet in my own tiny way. I will keep my front yard free of leaves for the sake of the neighbors and people across the street. That's it.
1
Simply beautiful- the zen of raking! Pausing to give thanks- Baruch Hashem.
Thank you
2
Beautifully written and a pleasure to read. I returned to life in the suburbs six years ago and gradually came to appreciate yard work, which in my youth I'd found an idiotic waste of time. I opted for a rake. I had a leg amputated high up in February so further yard work is out of the question. I miss it.
completeandtotalloser.blogspot.com
3
More like this, please.
4
i pull an agri-fab leaf mulcher behind my mower in tennessee during the fall and dump it in the mulch pile. this article is inane drivel.
Ms. Renkl, leaf blowers serve a purpose, particularly for those of us who are no longer as spry as we once were.
Nice try to divert attention from the cold hard fact that your state just elected Marsha Blackburn to be another apologist for a bankrupt party, but it won't wash.
No! Don't rake at all! Give insects a place to winter over, which in turn provides birds with food in the Spring. Plus, you'll have even more time to appreciate Fall's wonders.
https://www.bioadvanced.com/articles/fall-leaves-how-avoid-raking-and-other-tips
and
https://www.southernliving.com/garden/fall/why-you-should-not-rake-your-leaves
Dear Margaret,
Will you please be my friend? We’d also love for you to join our book club!
Sincerely,
Mary Kay
6
Thank you!
2
I raked leafs with a rake, never used a leaf blower. I also cut my grass with a push mower. Both are so easy - take out the tool, push or pull it until you get tired, put it away. Raking or mowing is no longer a big deal or a bothersome job. You just keep at it when you can, in short bursts, till you are done. And it is SO QUIET!
PS. and a good workout.
7
Thank you for this wonderful essay. It was worth taking the time to read it slowly
2
I agree. I could feel my tension rising while watching the evening news. Then this article caught my attention and I lost myself in it for a few lovely moments. How beautifully the author has captured some of the magic of Fall.
3
Nice. Until they are finally banned, I will be wearing "mickeys" to deaden the sound of the leaf blowers. And when the neighbors put their leaves to the curb for the town to pick up, I will steal them, dragging them back to my compost piles. By midsummer they will have been transformed into vegetables almost too beautiful to eat. Some people think it's all just too much work. It isn't... for the all the reasons you suggest. Thanks for your thoughts.
9
Very nice column. As someone trained in engineering acoustics, I hate noisy leaf blowers. In addition, I have seen too many just use them to blow the leaves away.
2
I'm a boomer. I feel sorry for the children of today in many ways. They will never know the joy helping your father rake on a blustery fall day. They will never know the enticing scent of leaf smoke, which was how leaves were disposed of back then. I think of that smell and the memory of raking by hand and I am at peace.
9
Thank you. This prompted my cherished memory of raking leaves with my father, 75 years ago. A different world then but the feel and smells still exist for me. My Dad and the burning of leaves is gone but still in my heart.
14
This is beautifully written - something I imagine my high school composition teacher would have shown to us to illustrate how to write a descriptive essay that's essentially a metaphor. I'm rarely moved by anything like I was by this piece, and can't recall the last time I printed something out to put by my desk as I will be with your column. Thank you.
7
I just don't rake when it's windy outside. Wait until it calms. Chances are good that your leaves may end up in someone else's yard - or vice versa.
1
Leaves in piles often do smell good, and anyone who rakes leaves on a windy day clearly has a few nuts loose.
1
"Wait, you have a yard?" says everyone in America under 35.
4
@Andy Everything considered I’d trade my large yard, wooded acreage and more to be under 35 again.
The trick, I suppose is to be happy where you are in life. (Never my strong suit.)
BTW, here’s a formula for calculating old age:
O.A. = n + 15, where n is your current age.
2
@Andy And many over 35.
1
Beautiful piece. Gas-powered leaf blowers ruin the tranquility of many neighborhoods; their particular volume and frequency have been shown to be extraordinary in terms of ability to annoy those within 100 yards. In our neighborhood, each owner of our 0.20 acre plots hires a team of landscapers to blow every last leaf into the street every week, where they are sucked up by huge, loud trucks. And of course, it can not be on the same day, so it is much of the day, every day of the week, often beginning at the ungodly hour of 7am - ungodly to those with insomnia, or who work 2nd shift. Never mind that by mid-afternoon, on their appointed day, each of these lawns is covered again with leaves. Spring and summer bring no reprieve as these same people pay the landscapers to mow the grass and then blow it up into the air with leaf blowers. Edmunds reported that an hour of leaf-blowing is akin to driving a Ford F-150 from CT to Texas, in terms of hydrocarbon emissions. And half of my neighbors drive a Prius.
12
Thank you.
1
Beautiful piece. My spouse doesn’t like that I rake and pile the leaves around the parking strip and elsewhere to keep weeds from growing all winter. Because we have Audubon certified bird habitat she will now be in full support! I had no idea that covering the ground with leaves would provide critters for the babies in the spring. Yea!
9
Until the blower can blow the debris to "never land", I'll keep it reversed and suck the stuff into the bag. The residents in my neighborhood have undocumented landscapers blow their mess into everyone else's bank-owned yards. My trimmings go into a biodegradable bag for bulk pickup.
3
Good metaphor for difficult times. But if you live in an arid place like California don’t use a metal leaf rake! Scratch the tines of a metal rake across a stray rock or a stepping stone and you risk raising a spark in all those dry leaves. I use a plastic rake now because that happened to me once. Scared the dickens out of me.
(I loathe leaf blowers. I rake all of my tree litter by hand and place it around my tree roots — on the wild parts of my parcel — as mulch. I’ve watched landscape workers blow leaves onto a neighboring property, only to have the worker on that property blow them back.)
3
Only the editors at the Times could pick a headline that turns a lovely essay into a political piece.
What’s political about this???
1
@Zan, um...maybe you missed the metaphor?
@Zan I think the essay may have been a subtle metaphor.
I live in the Wet Tropics. Rarely do I use a garden rake, and never a blower.
Instead, I rake bent over rapidly using my crooked, bare fingers, legs wide apart, pulling back the debris between my legs. Sometimes, to give my back a rest, I rake backwards using my unshod feet alternately. I’ve learnt to do this from watching the orange-footed scrub fowl.
Believe it or not, it’s much faster using my method than a garden rake. It gives me a very good workout. It has greatly strengthened my back. It places me right down at soil level so I can see and smell the aroma of the living earth.
25
@Colenso, the foot swipe works for built-up pine needles, too. Once you have a bunch of pine straw built up against your foot, your leg works as a push broom.
1
@Colenso, the Australian Brush Turkey (or just "bush turkey") is an even more efficient raker of leaves. They will keep your yard free of leaves, no problem. Unfortunately you have to put a fence round any garden beds as they will rake up these too!
I know they are in Queensland as well as NSW.
1
Homeowner Yard Maintenance - a quaint American tradition of the mid-20th century, performed by the owner himself or herself or themselves or by a legion of Boomer kids using simple implements.
But then owners aged, families got smaller and those kids who were left were way too busy padding their college apps with socially-redeeming efforts to be involved with chores as mundane as raking leaves ("I was All-State in Leaf Raking and Burning" has never, ever shown up in a college essay). So substitution took place: either Central Americans for North Americans, or capital for labor (or both). Cacophony (either aural or cultural [or both]) was the inevitable result.
Obviously, we're not better off. But at least those who currently gather leaves - by whatever means - will be spared my fate. Growing up in Bucks County, across the river from Trenton, meant many a fall Saturday afternoon spent raking. The effort was eased by my dad bringing the kitchen radio outside so that we could listen to Princeton football games and the exploits of Cosmo, Gogo and other worthies. To my eternal chagrin, I discovered years later that Lauson Cashdollar, with a name destined for a stellar career in finance, ended up as an attorney. No one should have their projections of cosmic order dashed so heartlessly - ending up as withered as those formerly-green leaves.
It's been over 50 years now, but I'm sure I'll get over it...eventually.
5
@Tad La Fountain, huh? My husband and I are pushing 60. We do our own yard work. No hiring “Central Americans,” or resorting to “capital for labor.” Just good, hard work performed in the fresh air by two oldish people who would rather do that than watch a football game on tv.
1
Definition of metaphor
1 : a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money)
Thank you Margaret, for giving me some hope after the mid-term elections. Yes, it is frustrating to have your ideas and leaves blown by the wind. But eventually, they settle down, make sense, and become part of the future.
There is HOPE!
7
At 69 I still take immense pleasure in dragging my feet through a pile of leaves and listening to the rustle of them beneath my feet.
A dear friend described for our group yesterday an experience she had during a walk at a meditation retreat last month.
She was watching the wind blow through an aspen tree. The leaves quaking as they will. Then one leaf left the tree and floated to the ground. Then another and another. She was transfixed. The idea that the leaves would refuse to fall and cling to the tree came to mind. Impossible.
The rhythms of Nature are beautiful to contemplate.
Thanks for this essay, Ms Renkl.
Peace to All.
10
The problem is that rakes are old tech, and leaf blowers are new tech. Imagine if the leaf blower had been invented first, and then someone invented the rake. We'd say, "look at this wonderful newfangled rake. It uses no gas or electricity, is easy to operate, and is wonderfully quiet. It's so easy, a child can do it."
15
Thank you - that was beautiful and uplifting to read. With worrying about friends in the fire zones in California and dreading at least another two years of Trump, it was a dreary Monday for me. This piece, curiously because I'm not much of a gardener, brought me peace.
8
We have 50+-year old Quaking Aspen next to our driveway.
It is lovely when the new, shiny leaves come out in the spring - they 'quake' with the slightest breeze, and it looks heavenly.
But come Fall, even starting as early as August, it starts shedding its leaves - not the beautiful golden yellow or red or such, but ugly, crumpled brown! Probably a million of them. Almost every morning, not only the lawn, but the driveway is covered And I have to use a rake or a corded blower or a cord-less blower to move it all to curbside.
It is now finally completely bare - well before most of the trees in the neighborhood. In a way, the bare tree looks pretty too!
Our granddaughter who lives away from us in NJ and was all of two last year and loved to help me rake the leaves when visiting in the fall, would always tell me over the phone, 'Grandpa, when I come to your house, I will help you break the leaves'!
2
So first off, you DON"T rake leaves on windy day. And second, try leaving the leaves - helps our invertebrates, which helps our birds...rake the leaves under shrubs or around base of trees. If you have too many, pile them into a leaf bin and let them rot. Great soil amendment next spring. It doesn't add nutrients but it breaks up heavy soil, helps the soil retain water.
4
Lovely fall piece. I hope many of us at least have memories of raking leaves with our parents or grandparents before jumping on the naturally glorious pile.
Leaf blowers are arguably the biggest bane of us who live in modern society, providing a "convenience" that is harmful in multiple ways to most of us, including the unfortunate workers or operators who are usually amidst the "Pig-Pen-like cloud of toxic fumes. Ugh.
6
Nice imagery, tried to enjoy it over the noise of developers paving over every square inch of the planet.
3
Some years ago, my next door neighbor saw me raking leaves and came over with his leaf blower to "help" me. I had to ask him twice to leave, and then tell him to leave, before he finally took his blower and went home.
Thank you for these comforting and calming thoughts. I'm not always proud of Tennessee, but I'm certainly proud to share this glorious and maddening State with you.
12
Beautiful words. I rake, almost daily, here in the windy eastern suburbs of Portland Oregon. But today, on the advice of another columnist, I am taking a time out and communing with nature. May the trees blow and cover my leaf blowing, trump supporting neighbors lawn with their leaves. I'll finish the raking tomorrow.
6
When I read this column, I saw an ad for the Cyclone Rake, apparently a super-sized version that you can sit on while you blow leaves, if I understood their picture correctly. A good example of how the current model for supporting the internet is broken.
Stop with the old is better. We used a rake, sure, but then we set them on fire and filled the neighborhood with smoke. Smelled better than exhaust, but no better for the environment
Thank you Ms. Renkl, for reminding me again why I now love to do the very chores I use to hate when I was an adolescent
5
The Sage of Nashville with another fine parable. Thank you, Margaret Renkl.
6
Margaret Renkl's essay is a paean to the scent and swirl of autumn.
6
Brilliant revisioning of the tasks that lie ahead of us. Springtime comes.
1
I really enjoy Ms. Renkl's columns but I hate raking leaves even more. Here's to using battery powered blowers. They are not as carbon neutral as an old fashioned rake but much better than a gasoline powered blower.
2
I agree that leaf blowers should be banded. We live in an area where no one does their own lawn. Many pleasant fall walks have been spoiled by that incesant noise as all of the landscape companies work on the lawns.
8
Beautiful. Thank you.
What a beautiful article ~~ an allegory, a homily, and a song all in one. It brought tears to my eyes and unzipped the tension that has been crawling up my back all day.
Thank you, Ms. Renkl!
11
Here in SW Florida raking leafs is not a problem but having a neighbor that uses a unmuffled leaf blower to dry his precious car is.
1
A beautiful, thoughtful piece...
Which I read on my lunch break after a couple of hours of blowing - two hours down, four or five more to go,
I’m sorry, but my leaf blower is literally my most prized possession - my guilty pleasure! Using it one (long) day in the fall is is the only household chore I look forward to.
If there were an NRA for leaf blower owners I’d be a charter member.
2
@Pjcraig
Perhaps a riding vacuum cleaner will be invented. Then there’s another fabulous chore for you!
2
I recently left NYC after 18 wonderful, many of them long, years to a tree-lined suburban early 20th-century neighborhood. What at one time felt unthinkable now feels like the only sane choice available to me. I have twelve (!!!) mature trees on my property. I've been raking constantly the last couple of months. Who knew what simple joy could be found there? When I'm done, sometimes I feel like I've had a transcendental meditative experience.
A neighbor recently offered to lend me his leafblower. Madness, I thought. Pure madness. I said "no thank you." instead.
6
What a beautiful, thoughtful, hopeful piece. It nourished my soul today so thank you for that.
10
Wait a minute! This piece is not about wind or even leaf blowers. It is a lovely reminder that we live in a larger world than our own, that nature has its own rhythms, and that we will enjoy stopping and taking a moment or more to appreciate all that. This "editorial" spoke to me, although I must admit to being already convinced of the message. I am lucky enough to live out my old age in the country. There are lots of chores, but being out doing them as much as one can is satisfying. So what if you have to stop to rest your knees? It's all worth it.
12
Beautiful. Loved especially the vast squirrel-planted forests and being gentle with the maple roots. Thank you
2
My heart rate went down as I read this beautiful piece. A prose poem. Thanks so much.
12
Recommend reading a novel "When the English Fall" to give some perspective on a brief albeit unwanted return to simpler means. A quick read. A meaningful message. A world without electricity because of massive solar storms makes manual work to exist a new necessity. Yes it is fiction but it is art imitating (or predicting) a future possibility.
Leaves falling and decaying are proof of abundance in the cycle of renewal. Leafblowers represent efforts to innovate and accelerate "progress" (for me personally).
In an all too busy, noisy world that generates waste that does not naturally decay well (e.g. plastics...) I seek quiet and often find it in a forest where leafblowers do not go; and natural rhythms serve as the Gardner.
Thank you for a lovely, visually rich piece.
8
THE RHYTHMIC pulse of this piece reminds me of the folksongs that were the steady beat of challenging injustice during the 60s. The words of the balladeers are more prescient are essential to our vigilance in the face of adversity. For, The Answer is Blowing in the Wind. For Every Thing and Every Purpose Under Heaven, there is a Season. Let this be, then, our season of discontent, of seeking the answer blowing in the wind and of taking time for every thing and every purpose under heaven. Now that we children of the 60s have counted most of our days, let us gird for yet another challenge to tyranny, injustice, violence and crime. Personified by the constant incitement to violence emanating from the whitest white house, against the humanity of all colors.
10
Thank you; this article makes me realize that Chauncey Gardner’s garden of economy actually kind of made sense, which it did.
1
Reading this, and so many pieces like it, shows me how little I was taught about the natural world as a child growing up in a suburb of Cleveland. Raking leaves was intended to clear the lawn, period. There was no sense of the life-giving quality of leaf rot, of the creatures and insects living in that tiny ecosystem. Everything was on the surface.
It was the same for everything else: snow had to be cleared from driveway and walkway, and was good for skiing; spring flowers were for prettiness; summer sun was for fun (and getting tan -- remember that?!) and being outdoors, but not for being in nature. Even camping was an exercise in being as comfortable as possible and having a good time, not for engaging with nature.
I know I was/am not alone in this nature-barren upbringing. I am so grateful to people who learned better for teaching me about the natural world and making me want to be a part of it in a much deeper way. I wish I had some leaves to rake, but maybe a walk around the block will have to do.
13
Not just the autumn leaf-blowers. All year long, the blowers used in place of brooms on all paved surfaces. We’ve become a society too cheap and lazy for the broom and rake. Our economy can no longer afford to pay the labor hours for non gasoline fueled grounds maintenance.
9
Just came in from raking.....I LIKE to rake.....Where I live, in the country, it's a nice respite from the ridiculous news and the "outrage" du jour.....
It's gray and windy here today.....and a lot of the leaves blow away as the wind blows south to north over the ridge line I live on....a self cleaning lawn almost.....as long as the leaves don't tangle in high grass or around the tree roots.....I free them with my rake, and they mostly blow away into the woods and fields across the road.......
I own a gas powered weed whacker, but I actually like to use a swinging manual 'Golf stick" sickle to cut the high weeds that grow in the sprawling tree roots......the people who drive by at 50 mph ( on our 30 MPH road) looking out the windshield and at thier phones while they drive, would never notice the high weeds anyway....
I began to leave the higher "weeds" this year. They are flowers. Mostly hawkweed in orange and yellow, and some kind of really delicate blue flower on a very thin stem. They are very pretty.
I left them.
There is so much unpleasantness in the world right now. Those flowers symbolize simplicity, and I will not cut them down any longer.
We need to return to simpler times.
11
Let the wind "rake" them into piles. Sack 'em for the goats.
3
We live on a corner lot and our trees are the last to shed all of its leaves. Thus, I found myself raking leaves from my trees and everyone else’s on the block. It was exhausting raking, retaking and then bagging all those leaves, but the cheapest CLEANSING of the mind and body on earth.
Damn, I needed that what with all the election shenanigans, shootings, fires, debasing of our Constitution and institutions; and failed leadership.
Mother Nature can destroy but SHE also heals many woes so that we can imagine a brighter day!
10
For those of us retired and in our seventies the leaf blower is a Godsend. That "awful noise" usually happens on a normal workday when most people are in school or at work. It saves hours of back hurting raking. And when used with the lawnmower that has not been put away yet it shreds the leaves into a nice mixture that enriches the soil. Oh and by the way, that "awful noise" machine can also be used to clear the walk and driveway of low quantities of new snow so that other seniors don't fall on a slick sidewalk.
5
Brilliant. Thank you.
1
Raking leaves also leaves a better product. The grass is dethatched a bit and I have much better control of my pile than with a leaf blower.
A red state liberal? Continue raking. If Ted Cruz almost lost in Texas, your nice raked pile of leaves is doing it's job. Not everything is drown out by the leaf blower noise.
3
Reading this makes me think, "Yes! There is a God!"
3
Just don't try.
What a bunch of nostalgic hogwash! If I can't pick it up with a lawnmower or reversed leaf blower, I say just leave it (as, lest we forget, nature intended).
1
Venus...rake
Mars....horrible, nasty leaf mega-blower......
poetry
2
A parable.
3
This should be required reading in my suburban neighborhood where our quiet peace is shattered almost daily by the incessant drone of those pollution-spewing abominations.
7
@Tom...Maybe you could organize a Leaf Blower Police Force.
“Remember that one day soon the wind will die down”...i haven’t had to shut the front door behind me in almost 6 years! Wind die down! LOL! Lovely article though! Press On!
1
Lovely essay. No yard so no need to rake or blow . . . nevertheless . . .
2
I hated my corded toro blower, but ....wow...was it powerful
After years of rrying to embrace it the cord was just too much of a nuisance. So, it’s true. A good rake is more efficient. And, I delight in improving my technique. Form and strategy is critical.
No cord...what freedom!
But, then came along my cordless blower. I got freedom from the cord and a lightweight 20v battery....high end model....not the other one...has the power. Now, it’s blower and rake combo. Efficiency is now at its best.
But, I do hate the noise of their new and much more powerful blowers from my neighbors. They go on and on. I don’t think they care too much about effeciency.
At the end of the day, I still love my new blower, keep my rake handy, and relate to my blower so differently than my neighbors that I have a theory. Those that still use their rakes are more rational and their minds are blown that anyone....like those that over use their blowers....vote for a con man for president!
1
@william Phillips...Your neighbors probably voted for the same person you did. They probably think you voted for the Other person. That's the tyranny of leaves.
Thank you!
3
Take it from one experienced in these things. There are two easy do-it-yourself solutions. Solution #1: Fence your yard. In that way the blessed wind, when it comes, will blow the leaves up against the fence, where they are easy to bag and remove. The fence also will keep leaves from neighboring yards from blowing in. Solutions #2. Buy a house at the top of a hill. The wind will then carry away your leaves for someone else to worry about. I have tried both succesfully.
If all else fails, put in ear plugs and hire a professional to come. For a few bucks they will leave your premises leafless, and do the gutters as well. They do it quickly.
Thanks. I just know what you're talking about.
2
Oh, thank you for this sweet moment. I’ve raked for so many years , and now I’m sort of old and I pay someone with a loud and thoughtless blower to take my leaves away as if they’d never been. Before he comes, I think I’ll go out and rake a pile or so and hide them in a corner of my yard in the bushes. I think I will .... just for the smell of it.
3
Wow! Thank you.
2
I have a fundamental problem with all these musings on the good ole' days gone by. Does the author bemoan the harsh glow of the electric lightbuld as compared to the gentle flickering modulation of the candle? Does she long for the times when the clack...clack...clack of horses hooves occupied our ears before being drowned out by the incessent whirr of the internal combustion engine? Does she wish she could feel the icy stream flow through her calloused habds as she beat laundry on the rocks on its banks because of her disdain for the distance from nature and hard work the washing machine has created for her?
There is no doubt something lost. But anybody experiencing the former state of affairs has to acknowledge the gain. To romanticize those losses seems problenatic to me.
2
"Nothing is truly over". I disagree. I prefer my late Mom's saying:
"You better get out and dance, because the band won't be playing forever".
7
It drives me crazy the way people blow their leaves into a pile, put them in plastic bags made from fossil fuels and then put them curbside to be picked up by a fossil fuel guzzling machine. Then the next spring they buy fertilizer made from the same fossil fuels to grow green grass faster and then use fossil fuel lawn mowers to cut their grass.
What a mind boggling existence....... to extinction.
154
@Harvey
And it makes me cray that municipalities insist on manicured lawns, in fact, that they encourage lawns at all
12
@cheryl
BUMP! and then go into housing developments ; you cannot even hang your laundry outside much less let the lawn get above 4".
3
I understand your analogy and appreciate it.
1
Thank you, Margaret Renkl, for this lovely piece of writing and fragment of hope. Here in Tennessee, Election Day felt like just another series of battles lost in the South's long racial and partisan warfare. The names of the parties changed in the 1960s, but the racists and fear-mongers triumphed again particularly in the election of Marsha Blackburn. I despaired for my state last Tuesday. This essay reminds me to keep raking, no matter what the prevailing wind does to my efforts.
7
Thanks for changing my perspective this morning!
The hope that I have is that we may learn collectively and see Donald Trump as a warning of what might come later in our history in a far more dangerous and destructive way if we are not vigilant . We often think“ it can’t get any worse than this”, but if you look at the Third Reich ,and at Stalin's reign of terror , and take note of other narcissistic autocrats who have done irreparable damage to their countries, we can see indeed how much worse it can get . We should not be so arrogant to think that something that horrible could never happened here in the United States ; empires have fallen for thousands of years because of a similar arrogance and conceit .
The lesson that we must learn is that when our American citizens feel a sense of desperation about their futures, they should not allow themselves to be so easily hoodwinked by a pathological liar who promises everything but ultimately gives nothing. We must show the world and our own American citizens that what Donald Trump has created is not a success, it is not for the “good” of the country, and it does damage to everyone in the long run.
2
"Doesn't everything die, and too soon?" Mary Oliver
35
@Melissa
"
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
To the last, I aim to be idle and blessed. To be anything else is a waste of my one wild and precious life.
13
Wait until the wind wind is calm.
Ms. Renkl,
Thank you for this.
1
Rake your leaves with a lawnmower and put the mulch in your yard waste bin. Sorry about being practical instead of poetic.
1
@Macduff15 - No you aren't or you wouldn't have written it.
1
Margaret Renkl's columns always brighten my day. I too enjoy working in my garden and find that nature always has something to teach me. While raking leaves last week, I found a number of not so beautiful grubs in my leaf compost pile. When I was younger, I might have automatically thought of them as a danger to my pretty garden and plotted their demise. I now know that they are harmless. As grubs they help to loosen the soil. They then grow into beautiful beetles (also harmless), and compliment the flowers nicely. The longer I live, the more I appreciate the wonder and beauty around me. Raking leaves in the wind is indeed not frustrating. It's a joy. Thank you for this article.
6
well written. i push my lawn mower to mulch leaves. i hate the leave blowers. They are not much faster than a rake. granddaughters want to earn money. Give them enough money to get the job done.
1
I am a liberal in the red Central Valley and the resident of a corner lot with 7 large trees. Thanks for a well-crafted, twofold lesson.
7
People needed to state upfront whether they rake leaves or not. Elsewise its just noise.
I came to this article hoping for some insight on how you keep your wits about you as a liberal living in a red state. I currently live in a blue state but within 2 years will be retiring to a very red state.
I loved your appreciation of the peace you can find outdoors and will plan to do the same in my future environment.
In addition, of course, I will then work hard to support my future Democratic representatives in the local, state and national races.
3
While listening to a friend tell me of a tree that fell on her house this weekend last, a gardener with Hollywood looks, showed up unannounced and I greeted him like Lady Chatterley.
Mother Nature and I met at dawn, where she had left a rich tapestry of leaves in the small driveway and branches of weak trees in the clearing. The rabbit in the newly discovered flower pond was still standing guard, while a kind soul left a duck to keep him company.
A day of sunlight and the wind is silent now, while the garden lawn has a bright fresh green dress which was hiding, and not far away, there is a small hill of autumn leaves, large enough to have a bonfire party.
Listening to a theme from 'Bohemian Rhapsody' indoors, while reflecting on this young gardening team hard at work.
These men fit into this sonata of Nature in Autumn, casting away sweeping thoughts of Verlaine and the sound of his melancholic violins, reminiscent of grey days playing in the childhood gardens of The Tuileries long ago.
1
I have found that raking leaves on a windy day -- yesterday, for example -- is helped by a vast and colorful supply of curses, repeated over and over again, with increasing vehemence.
4
What a wonderful article! It harkens back to my childhood days of raking leaves into large piles so that we could jump into them. Also, unlike today, we could burn the leave piles. There is not better and wonderful smell on earth than burning leaves. But since it is a rather nice day today I think I will simply rake up a nice pile of leaves and let them cradle me as I fall gently to sleep.
4
I, too, hate leaf blowers. What bothers me most about them, besides the noise, is how cavalierly we burn gas and pollute the air when raking is not that difficult. Leaf blowers could be the poster child for not thinking about the environmental consequences of our actions. Even so, I still felt peer pressure to break out the leaf blower (left to me by the previous owner, a guilt-inspiring hint).
I appreciate this essay not just because it supports raking, but because it supports it for poetic, soulful reasons. This is far better than the way I was thinking about it, which was moralistic and full of fearful worry about the bureacruatic-sounding "environment".
And now I am appreciating not just of squirrels and bugs that birds will later eat, but also writers who remind us of these things. Thank you.
1
Yep, I love silence. But I also love my leaf blower. For everything there is a season.
4
A lovely piece. Two weeks ago I used my rake to cover up a freshly dug grave for our little dog who succumbed to tick borne disease. But, I use an electric leaf blower on my leaves.
1
Beautifully written, brought back memories of my childhood..thank you Margaret
2
Lovely article, like poetry! So nice to read something other than all the troubles in the world.
2
I don't rake the leaves in my yard. I live on a hill and they are mostly swept away by the wind. What remain stay as they lay until they are no more. Occasionally the neighbor kids will ask if they can rake. I let them and usually end up with a 6 x 6 patch of bare grass that fills with more leaves by the next day. Several years ago I retired my gas-powered lawn mower for a battery operated one, the reduction in noise is in some ways liberating. I can literally mow lawn at 7 AM and not wake the neighbors. The mower lead me to the same brand battery operated snow-blower and then a small tiller joined the gang. Clearing the driveway in the winter has become quite medatative. With a hat pulled over my ears, falling snow to muffle the sound and the whine of the wind, I often cannot hear the snowblower. It is ironic that the same wind that clears the leaves in the fall, dumps the snow directly on my driveway in the winter. I am sure there is a lesson in that statement. In any event, as long as I am the owner of this house there will be no leaf-blowers in residence.
5
Back in my younger years when I lived in Queens, a rake would have done just fine for my postage stamp yard. These days, in my large, tree-filled lawn in suburban Ohio, there is absolutely no way I could manage all the leaves with just a rake. My leaf blower makes an onerous job a little bit simpler, and is electric, so no fumes. I can appreciate the authors sentiment, but a rake is just not going to do the job for many of us.
2
No! The wind drives me nuts! I try to place the bin in just the right position to shield the pile I’m raking. But zen schmen - that wind still drives me nuts!!!
14
As a liberal in red, red Nebraska, this is balm for the soul. Thank you.
7
I remember the leaf blowers. There's something about their particular noise that is impossible to tune out. Convenience at the cost of sanity.
What drives me crazy here is the piped-in music that starts in the parking lot and follows you every step of the way while you're shopping, dining, walking about. God forbid you should be able to think your thoughts without being mood-manipulated into leaving your cash behind.
6
If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. Sun Tzu
87
...and if they wait by the river long enough, will yours?
4
@Verisimilitude Boswick
...and won't we all, regardless who waits?
5
Speaking of nature metaphors, liberals are often called snowflakes. In many parts of the country that conjures something ephemeral and inconsequential, but in the northeast it makes me think of houses collapsed from the weight of all those snowflakes. It is also remarkable how many accidents happen in places like Florida when a few snowflakes land on the road...
7
The bliss of autumn is destroyed yearly by those whining leaf blowers here in my otherwise lovely building complex in leafy Riverdale. Please, someone, start a landscape maintenance company that rakes instead of roars!
3
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this.....
4
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-Christina Rossetti
9
perfection
is
fall
5
If you care about the natural environment please do not rake your leaves and "leave" them be, micro-ecologies in your garden depend upon them...
http://www.natureconservancy.ca/en/blog/leave-those-leaves.html#.W-mSXeJry00
Please do not use herbicides or insecticides in your garden either, they do great harm to dandelions and the bees which depend on them.
Thank you.
5
Thanks, we all needed that.
3
As I started reading this article, I thought the leaf blower a metaphor for Trump. Get out your rakes. I did today.
12
Trump -- America's No. 1 rake -- should be required to tidy up the yards of all decent Americans. No rest for the wicked.
2
... and to keep that leaf from drying out place it in a folded piece of waxed paper then place the folded waxed paper into a folded tea towel. Use your iron to press the tea towel and melt the wax onto the leaf thus preserving it;thoughts of glorious autumn days; the November moon and a harbinger of Spring.
2
This made me happy
7
I could almost feel my blood pressure lowering as I read your beautiful prose, Ms. Renkl. Thank you.
12
Thank you. A small corner of peace in these disturbing times. And a reminder of why I take to the woods each day.
129
Better yet, don't rake at all. Just run over the leaves with a mower once or twice. That will leave bits of leaf small enough to sift down to the soil and compost in situ.
I haven't raked leaves in 20 years, but I have cut back on lawn fertilizer.
Oh and by the way, the writer has confused "unloosen" with "unfasten."
5
Beautiful words. Thank you.
2
Very meditative and well-written! Thanks so very much.
6
OR you can get a mulching blade for your lawn mower, when you cut the grass....you chop the fallen leaves into small, easily compostable tidbits that disappear into the grass, and which feed the lawn for next spring. It does not totally replace raking -- you'll still need to rake out decorative garden beds and around trees -- but about 85-90% of it.
I appreciate all the musings about fall and winter and the promise of another spring, etc. but you can also get TOO sentimental about leaf cleanup, which can be an onerous task and present a huge burden to any homeowners who are older, or alone, or lack the money to pay for landscaping services.
6
@Concerned Citizen
You do not need a special blade to mulch leaves. I live on 10 surrounded by trees and my leaves mulch just fine the mower I use.
And I was intending to to use my leaf blower later today, once the frost on the front lawn leaves vanished. Perhaps I'll rank them instead.
1
Ahhhh! Meditative leaf raking! A beautiful description of the flow of life. Thank you! I’ll bet a few rakes are retrieved and put to use after reading this lovely column.
5
Yesterday I wrestled with leaves and the wind. It seemed as I moved the leaves closer to their destination, the wind laughed at me and blew them back. Timely
48
This is a lovely piece. It is also useless. As much as I detest the sound of leaf blowers and other motorized lawn tools, I will, like my neighbors, fire up my blower when the clock strikes nine. Why? The answer is not hypocrisy. In Oregon, in mid- to late-fall, the ground is simply too wet to rake. Feet turn ground to mud, and tines tear underlying plants. Ms. Renkl has written a lovely piece, but her advice is irrelevant. The best we here can do is coordinate our aural assault by mutually agreeing that 9 to noon on weekends and holidays is our cacophony hour.
5
Lovely writing. The leaf blower is another element in the get 'er done armory. And yet...my bright red electric blower doesn't stink or whine. I wait until the two crabby old sugar maples in the front yard have dropped their drawers, then I have to plug it into the outside socket and wander around, tethered by the bright orange extension cable. I finished my front yard in top time, then the gravel drive (what a pain to rake that would've been!). Now, still with time on my hands, I blow the driveway of my elderly neighbor, leaving all the leaves in a long row at the curb, one on his side and one on mine, for the county sucker truck to come a vacuum it all up and turn my leaves into mulch, good rich landfill. I put Big Red away and look around. A good job is leaving it imperfect, still littered in places, but cared for. My 110 year old little white house sits like a prim lady atop her hill, surveying the street proudly, then says to me: Now, the gutters.
6
It’s 7:15 in NH this morning. Guess what I’m doing today?
I had to laugh when I saw this article.
In Australia, native trees, especially Eucalypt and Angophora species (usually collectively called "gum trees"), lose their leaves 24 hours a day EVERY day of the year! They shed bark all the time too. Thjey are still evergreen trees, though.
Many English migrants come here and are horrified that they have to rake leaves up all year round. They should be thankful that they are not in the same volume as the annual Northern Hemisphere Autumn/Fall drop.
Curious that this writer uses "Autumn" and not "Fall". "Fall" is the original English word taken to North America by the first colonists. In the "mother country" it got replaced in the 19th century with French-derived "Autumn", likely for snobbish reasons.
1
@Bruce Stafford
Ah yes, we are siblings from another mother. Our oakes, mahoganies and other deciduous types fall all year, with a bigger drop during the late winter, early spring, which happens all in one day here in South Florida. The best part, is that the leaves do not break down-tough to resist pests I presume, so no attempt at a compost pile for us. The only way we know what season it is by looking out a window is by the quality of the light.
2
Thanks Margaret, your imagery is excellent, but as a clean-energy environmentalist one of my biggest irritations is stinking, gas powered leaf blowers, so, imagining, 'smelling' those, well, that was putrid. Speaking of which, there's something wonderful about that earthy smell of composting organic material (I'm also a 'master composter', per UW-Extension.) Hope you heard, we started composting a few conservatives up here in Wisco' last week. >> There's a smell I can live with.
9
@Tony - maybe soon-to-be unemployed Scott Walker will take up raking for spare change. A little hard work might help him see that his next job could be gutter clearing, then snow blowing, then seeding and mowing and on and on.
3
This year I didn't use my leaf blower. I just raked the leaves from my single maple tree in the front yard (85' by 75") into about ten piles which I then raked up and put in bags (about 12 ex. large plastic bags). My trash collector will only take six bags at a time so I will have to wait until next week to put the remaining six bags out on the curb. I think it took me much less time than with the leaf blower. When considering all the wasted time it takes to make the extra trips to get the gasoline and oil the time was cut in half. The hard part was waiting until the leaves all fell. Plus, it didn't stink and I won't have the fuel around all winter. No wait, I just moved the snow thrower into the garage from the shed. Never mind.
1
This is beautiful, and I agree with Margaret Renkl about the nefarious nature of leaf blowers and the restoration of the soul from gentle yard work. However, the modern thinking is that the best practices is to leave the leaves where they fall. Best for all those lovely creatures that live in the soil - feeding them new organic matter and providing them shelter for the winter. Here is a website from the Xerces Society for the Conservation of Invertebrates on the subject: https://xerces.org/2017/10/06/leave-the-leaves/
2
I love it. Thank you, Margaret! I agree: power leaf blowers have ruined the serenity of autumn. They are pointless, and aggravate me to madness.
2
Here it is, just beautiful writing!
Ina Garten's pumpkin roulade (rolled cake) recipe looks exactly like the illustration (without the leaves).
1
Wow Ms. Renkle, You've hit the nail on the head. Just yesterday afternoon I bemoaned "listening" to a leafblower that rattled my skull. Going forward, I'll remember I do have a choice! And, yes, we have leaves to rake!
3
If you can:
Rake them onto a huge tarp, the longer the better. When the tarp is piled high, pull it to a section of the yard where no leaves fall. It's a very unseemly thing to dump leaves on a suburban lawn. So spread them out. Make a mess. After dispersing them far and wide, it's time to make a little noise. Get out your lawn mower and mulch those leaves into little, brittle bits.
Yours is the domain of the righteous. No large trucks pulling up and spewing noxious fumes to carry your leaves away. No landfill for you. And, best of all, no bagging! There is something so revolutionary about defiling the suburban lawn with all of that brown.
Take a moment, then, to consider the neighbors' outrage at your upending of green's sanctity. The time for green will come again. And you may rest all winter knowing you did not dump that magnificent pile of leaves to fester without purpose in a landfill. You have done your job. Yours are the leaves of the righteous.
2
Both thumbs up, and just think; such peace & serenity is always with us, just abiding until we, from time to time, let go of our/selves.
1
Lucky you. I am a constitutional conservative living in a blue state, and there is no hope.
Even though about 36% od the citizens vote red.
The federal and state politiicians do not serve the citizens.
They serve the interests of the Democratic Party, exclusively.
Not a Democrat ?
You don't exist.
1
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" - Bob Dylan.
4
Just beautiful.
1
Enjoy the autumn and the leaves and organic pleasures they bring, while you can. Soon the Democrats will regulate and tax that too. We will all be the impoverished Socialist masses working to support those who belong to the party.
Everything will be subject to group-think and political correctness. It will all be double plus good.
Forgotten will be the American dream of self determination, and individualism, of raising your kids to be great people.
Well, maybe not in Tennessee, but almost certainly in New York.
Enjoy your freedom. While it lasts
1
No more raking. It’s primitive! I purchased a lawn mower with a recycling deck. Mow leaves and you have instant fertilizer
2
Margaret:
Love your writing.
What if you live in the woods, surrounded by magnificent leaf droppers?
MK
1
I've always suspected that the maintenance and frequent need for repair of power equipment takes more time than is saved by the use of these devices rather than manual equipment.
2
What a wonderful metaphor for hope. Thank you Ms. Renkl for a lovely piece.
4
Raking leaves, shoveling snow got me through my childhood. Whenever I was upset, I race outside and did chores, everyone's chores. "She is just lletting off steam," my mother would say. Raking leaves was my favorite chore since I got to smell the fall full blast and my hands didn't freeze like they did when I shoveled snow.
At 67, I don't rake leaves anymor but I walk through them in the park and kick them in the air like I did when I was young.
130
@BSR
I loved raking leaves. When I had a huge pile of leaves, I could take a running leap and land in them like a huge, fragrant cushion.
My parents both had "bad backs" and my sister was too small, so I did all the shoveling. I felt strong and vigorous. We lived on a corner, so I had to shovel the whole corner all the way to the neighbors' "boundaries."
Sometimes I'd go out and shovel while it was still showing so it would be lighter when the snow stopped. I had boundess energy, and I still do, even in my seventies --- I think the exercise made me stronger.
I live in California now and haven't seen snow in at least a decade. The skies are murky right now from savage fires hundreds of miles away.
The gardeners of the apartments across the street in my tony Silicon Valley community blow their leaf litter into our parking lot, and our cars are covered with it. Their litter piles up in our walkways and lawn. When I mentioned this to the landlord, he got it cleaned up and raised my rent $50 per month the next day. Maybe I should have raked them up myself and kept quiet.
I adore California and the wonderful people of this state. My heart is torn by these fires. Trump's swinish finger-wagging at our pain and threats to withhold federal aid that he should never have had the power to influence is simply incredible. How could the postwar baby boom have vomited out such a piece of garbage as he?
16
Excellent. Exactly how I feel but couldn’t express... especially the nasty leaf blowers.
3
Right on point. Thanks for re-contextualizing my November Monday morning.
2
If raking leaves will eliminate what is the loudest, most pervasive, and most obnoxious situation in America, may we all march together with are rakes , or pitchforks if need be, to Washington.
8
So Conservatives are the leaf blowers, I get it.
I live in an area of hopelessly Blue states, so much so, sometimes I wonder why I even vote. Where I live Conservatives are like Sasquatch, everyone has heard of them, no one has actually seen one. And yes we do rake leaves, but sometimes we are overwhelmed are have to fire up the leaf blower, just too many of them.
1
Gathering Leaves
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grow duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And whose to say where
The harvest shall stop?
— Robert Frost, 1923
156
@John Mullen "Good fences make good neighbors"
The simple is the natural, and the natural is the new.
1
I am impressed she writes about leave blowers and rakes better than I do.
What a wonderful essay! Who can add anything to it? I’m grateful for it; I find it quite beautiful.
3
I have lived on Apelgatan for 22 years, a street so named because in 1945 when post-war homes were built, at least 2 apple trees were planted in the yards.
When the leaves begin to fall, so too the apples, which become "fallfrukt" that in turn can become apple juice and applesauce.
The only sounds heard here are of kids playing, lots of them thanks to my new neighbors at 5 and 9. No blowers.
My leaves and apples are lifted by team Jabbar and Larry after raking. Soldier Jabbar walked from Iran into Iraq just before the Iran-Iraq war ended. The UN sent him here to Sweden where he, unable to read or write his two mother tongues, Farsi and Arabic, learned to speak, read, and write Swedish and thus could become my friend thanks to the Red Cross "Träffpunkten".
Each year he asks the same question, why do we rake today when more leaves will fall tomorrow?
The leaves and apples go to my local recycling center and then to appropriate futures.
Do as Margaret Renkl suggests, either when you rest or in a forest if you have one near.
"Give yourself over to what is happening in the sky. Watch the leaves...Watch the wind...listen."
And if you write in notebooks as I do, currently My So-Called 13th Life, put a leaf in to become part of the page on which you wrote, "Raked leaves today".
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
152
What a beautiful, beautiful piece … and people in red states - even more than the rest of us - need to find comfort wherever they can.
Maybe, the results in Georgia and Texas suggest a half-full glass to some, … although I'm afraid, not me. OTOH, places like Michigan and Wisconsin seem to have found something like an "early spring," and maybe, some day, we'll get back to understanding that along with different ways of talking "down South" and in border states, there are different ways of thinking. (Not sure who's doing much thinking in Tennessee these days, but I'm too far away to do any more than shake my head at how a reasonable & popular Dem. down there could get smooshed.)
No metaphor holds up perfectly, but when you think of "mother nature" at this time, you have to look at California and shake your head... Until you think of what happened just a few days before - with yet another deranged individual ending many lives - for no reason.
We mostly get how nature is SO very powerful and somewhat unpredictable, but human beings supposedly move in less random ways. How can thousands of elected Republicans look at themselves in the mirror as they choose between something like silence and whatever degree of cheerleading they provide our Hitlerian President?! This isn't some obscure part of history. It isn't even like the Civil War, where an alternate history survives. Every HS grad gets the good vs. evil battle from 1935-45, but 40% of them are choosing "evil" day after day!
1
Oh my...exactly where I was at yesterday with the rake in hand pushing the complications of my life away with each swipe of the tines on leaves!
Beautiful words and so true. A confession though, my little blower is sometimes used for its efficiency, getting into those corners you just can't get to! Not so evil!
Again such lovely and perfect thoughts to make a chore into a delight!
1
Now might be the time to walk over to your neighbors yard and rake it for them - showing how simple and effective - and quite - it can be. Be the rake.
1
I have a Norway maple in the front yard; I rake its leaves, carrying the tar spot fungus, put them into a compost patch and cover them so the wind cannot take their spores next spring.
Everything else I mulch in place with the mulching mower.
Some years the snow and ice come in a wet early storm that brings down leaves. The mess freezes to the ground, nothing you can do about that until next spring. The sheeted leaves cut off oxygen to the soil below; you get mold and patches of grass will die.
Next spring you clean up and reseed.
There's a political metaphor in all of this, too.
61
@Lee Harrison: I am not sure at all that composting tar spot fungus is a great idea. Even burying fungus might just preserve it and make it thrive.
This as a good an argument for BURNING leaves as I have ever heard.
2
@Lee Harrison
Hurray for the mulching mower! I mulch grass and leaves in place too. I don't even bother getting the leaves in piles anymore, the mulched leaves will just blow somewhere. I never use fertilizer on my lawn and it is and stays way greener than the lawns that get inundated with fertilizer/herbicide and watered every day.
7
@GvN
We are three generations living together in New Hampshire. My daughter and granddaughter take turns using the mulching mower on the leaves from the huge oaks that line two sides of our yard. Many neighbors blow or rake theirs to the curb where, if the wind hasn't blown them away, they are sucked up by a big truck that comes around each neighborhood once. Otherwise you are supposed to collect them in large paper "leaf bags" for pickup. I like our way better!
4
Beautiful. Thank you Margaret for this gift of sanity this morning. It moved me to tears.
6
As I read, my breathing slowed and my blood pressure went down.
A soothing balm.
Thank you.
6
An alternative to raking: mow the lawn - the lawn mower breaks up the leaves so they don’t smother the grass and instead return nutrients to the soil. This is also way easier than clearing leaves.
8
@walkman
Unless you have a very heavy layer of leaves, leaves will not smother a lawn. Breaking up the leaves certainly returns nutrients to the soil but if you leave the leaves you allow pollinators and other beneficial insects to overwinter. And of course, the leaves will biodegrade on their own over winter.
But frankly, I’ll take someone mowing their leaves any day over the army of leaf blowers that visit our neighborhood on a daily basis.
2
@walkman It's a metaphor! !
1
Last winter I was alone at home for seven weeks as my partner attended her dying father out of state. The gingko tree, which had glowed gold during fall, finally surrendered its glory during a windstorm. Usually, my partner does the raking. Alone, I considered the mattress of fading leaves covering the lawn and realized it was up to me. We don't own a leaf blower (I refuse), and out came the rake. I raked and piled and hauled leaves for two hours, filling my lungs with the air and scents Mr. Renkl describes, watching the scraggly lawn emerge as the piles grew, feeling my arms tire, and considering the cycles of life.
1
I do love raking the leaves in my driveway; taking in their scent and gorgeous colors close up, but elsewhere in the landscape, why not leave the leaves altogether? They are the best habitat for our native insects, the bees and moths and other pollinators who need their shelter to curl up in for the winter, and the microorganisms who need their nutrients to make healthy soil. It's much less work, too!
7
My lawn tractor is equipped with a mulching package on the mower deck, so lawn clippings get recycled into the lawn. In the fall I mow the leaves as many times as warranted, so they too get mulched into the soil. Other than maintaining a healthy crop of White Clover interspersed in my lawn, I rarely fertilize except for some granulated lime when needed.
2
Amen, amen. I'm the lone rake wielder in my neighborhood, and I have a very different perspective from most of suburbia. I am not removing leaves from the lawn (though that is what happens); I am harvesting them for my vegetable gardens, which I cover to a depth of maybe 2 ft. They settle over the winter, and in spring, I just rake them back where I want to plant.
All this raking takes time, of course, but it is pleasant, contemplative time spent outdoors. A few hours a day, weather permitting, spread over several weeks, takes care of it. And finally, at some point, I say to myself, "Let it snow."
24
@Ruth "I'm the lone rake wielder in my neighborhood"
Same here (the same with snow: the only onues who use a shovel). But when it's really windy (like last week), I wait for another day.
2
@Ruth I'm the sole raker in my community of row houses. Lawns are tiny, but still they have the blowers. I'm in an end unit, with more lawn than most, and not only do I rake it weekly, I also rake the community property on the other side of the sidewalk. The groundskeepers will come only once, in December when all the leaves are off the tress. I have no intention of waiting them and their industrial leaf blowers! I only hope they come on a day when I'm not at home.
1
Love this article - it reminds me of calmer times, and how we can reclaim them. Just one question though, what exactly does a centipede smell like?
11
Like almonds or cherries. It’s hydrogen cyanide, exuded as a defense.
2
@Dora the smell is variable and depends on the extent to which it has sweaty feet ;)
2
"In almost every situation where something is loud, obnoxious and seemingly ubiquitous, resistance is an option." Yes, indeed. They're everywhere, not just in autumn, and not just for leaves. Any excuse for a leaf blower when a rake or broom would be perfectly excellent. Not 'loud and obnoxious', like some people...
Years later I still have a mental picture of an elderly man in the driveway of a Hawaiian resort, leaning on his broom and gazing up at the full moon. Magic moments and poetry do not happen with a leaf blower.
I always enjoy and/or am informed by your columns, this one was lovely. Thank you.
19
I just wait for the wind to blow the leaves onto my neighbor's yard. A woman down the street told me she hates that, but I reassured her that my leaves would never travel that far. I go inside, sip a nice cup of coffee and read a poem.
1
Beautiful essay, buy what does the subtitle have to do with it?
1
@Doug
Agree 100%. It is a gentle article not served by the hard political lead. It’s much less about what “a red-state liberal” thinks and much more about what a thoughtful, caring person thinks—and at a time when it is easy to turn away from gentleness.
@Doug
Everything.
what's odd is a blue state Repibican could read this piece and draw the exact same conclusion. It's beautifully written
3
In a democracy, both sides need to get used to losing and accepting that loss. Elections and legislative decision making are collective acts. They are decisions made for everyone in the society. Everyone. There will be swings back and forth between parties. Just look at the last 50 years. Sometimes a group will get legislation that it likes passed. Sometimes legislation will pass that some group doesn't like. Actually, that happens a lot. It is fundamental that losers accept the decision. Ds, Rs, liberals, radicals, whoever.
Just like heaven...thank you, Margaret. I had already picked up my leaf earlier today...great minds!!
2
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
16
Beautiful piece, thank you!
3
Thank you so very much for this little “Moment of Zen”. I will share this and read it again and again during this stressful time in our great Country. Can smell the scent of dry leaf piles my Dad would rake to the street to burn...but only after my sister, brother and I would jump into those piles for fun!
2
Uh, I'm sorry, I don't waste my time raking leaves. It's called mulching. Don't know how to mulch leaves, sorry it's proprietary.
My husband and I recently bought a leaf blower. We use it in conjunction WITH the raking. The raking is therapy for our souls. The blower is therapy for our backs.
3
@kmgh
Hopefully you purchased an electric blower. Although your blower may be therapy for your back, a gas-powered leaf-blower is harmful to those in your community who suffer from respiratory issues and children and the elderly.
One gas-powered leaf blower used for thirty-minutes is the equivalent of a 3,887 mile-drive in an F-150 truck.
Compared to an average large car, one hour of operation of a leaf blower emits 498 times as much hydrocarbons, 49 times as much particulate matter and 26 times as much carbon monoxide.
For those of us who suffer from asthma, gas-powered leaf blowers make it impossible for us to enjoy our outdoor spaces.
2
@kmgh If you are dragging the rake, please try keeping both thumbs up on the handle and using a light sweeping motion. Might not be as hard on your backs.
@AHP We only use electric or manual for all yard work.
Another beautiful article by Renkl, along with Annelise Capossela's charming illustration. We need those quiet autumn moments to reflect on the past year, but in my suburban neighborhood, as soon as one lawn crew with the leaf blowers goes, another one comes in and the noise starts all over again.
6
Leaf blower are almost as big a nuisance as mosquitoes! I cannot count how many times has a gorgeous Saturday afternoon on the porch swing has been ruined an endlessly whining leaf blower. And just as one neighbor stops, it seems another starts. Those "perfect" suburban lawns are so overrated.
15
Nothing makes me happier than to hear my husband out raking in the yard. And nothing makes him happier too. He’s a member of the “clean carpet club” seeking a leafless lawn. But I come out and remind I’m that it never ends. And we smile. Every year
Leaf blowers are the worst.
Thank you, Margaret, for an essay full of beauty and meaning.
6
Ah, raking leaves against the prevailing political wind.
Imagine an ultralight aircraft, not much more than a sturdy hang glider. One could couple it with a small propeller and one of those powerful backpack leaf blower engines to power it.
South of the border the improvised aircraft are assembled by those who have walked this far, a thousand miles or more. The whining of the leaf blower engines begins to modulate as hundreds are started. In the clatter of the motors one can start to hear that song that's been stuck playing in your head. - "lord I was born a ramblin' ma-an"
Over the wall float hundreds, thousands of leaf blower powered gliders. Destination: golf courses, estates and backyards all across the land. Backpacks blowing, sneakers on the ground, ready to work.
3
"Before you go inside, take a leaf into your hand. Put it on your desk or next to your bed. Keep it nearby, through whatever troubles the long winter brings. It will help you remember that nothing is ever truly over. It will help you remember what the wind always teaches us in autumn: that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there."
Love, love, love this. A little bit of hope in a seemingly ever-darkening world. Alas, the planet will keep on spinning, and the sun will keep on rising, far after we are gone.
2
I love this essay, but in the spirit of complexity and contradiction, I’ll accept that there is a place for my rake with its broken tines and leaf blowers too.
2
I turned on the computer this morning braced for the news of the day. As I glanced over the headlines and titles, I chose this to read first. Thank you Margaret for starting my day with a moment of centering and peace.
6
Only a person who has never had to do 40+ hours a week of back-breaking labor would want landscaping crews - or anyone else, for that matter - to be deprived of their leaf blowing machines.
2
@T-Bone
It's true. But the blower is heavy. And the available power leads to over over-use. The rule should be "blow and go."
@T-Bone
Only a person who has never had an asthma attack, or never watched a child cough and gasp for air when an army of leaf blowers descends on neighboring properties, would advocate for the use of gas-powered leaf blowers. If you want your lawn to look like a golf course, move to a golf course community.
Enough with destroying the planet and harming others simply to maintain a “clean lawn,” a lawn that in reality is so filled with toxins it kills pollinators and beneficial insects. Think I’m wrong? Look up the science. It supports everything I’ve written.
2
An ode to leaf-raking. This is the story of my life in leafy Northwest Arkansas.
I’ll go outside Monday morning (if we don’t have a blizzard) and rake and rake.
1
I used to give fellow employees riddles for a workplace diversion. One of them was "What happens in your back yard in broad daylight thousands of times every year that you have probably never seen?" The answer is the actual detachment of a leaf from the tree. You see them falling after detachment, but rarely the actual detachment event. Probably nobody but me cares, but I've spent a lot of time fruitlessly trying to witness the event.
6
I never owned a leaf blower. And many years ago, in another life, I had a snow blower. One evening, about 8:00 PM after 36 hours or so of a snowstorm, blizzard-y sometimes, I went outside to get a jump on clearing sidewalks and the driveway. It was kind of like the calm after the hurricane. Freezing cold, starlight and oh so quiet. So quiet. I did maybe five minutes of snow blowing and stopped. I got rid of the snowblower. And here in VT, we tend to get a lot of snow, and boy do we have leaves. Thanks for this.
7
I read this as a parable — a beautiful meditation on the daily work of hopefulness.
This toxic anomaly in our capital, this too shall pass.
Our country is a collective of mostly, generally, good hearted, hard working, family loving people, if not the bonds of love and marriage, then the family of caring friends, workers, neighbors.
The dark season will pass by. We will get through it together.
15
@Joy, So very well said!
1
Beautifully written ode. It reminds me of a short story I finished reading just last night: The Caretaker (in the collection The Shell Collector) by Anthony Doerr. Recommend.
2
Can we also add those portable generators to the list of sounds that disrupt our solitude?
1
I love raking leaves. It’s peaceful, meditative and life instructive in that no matter how much you take, somehow it’s never 100% done.
12
A wonderful piece of writing on a daunting task for us, people from the Northeast. I will remember those warming sentences when I spent countless hours raking the continuous influx of leafs from my neighbours maples blown into my backyard.
Thank you !
2
Ahhhh. Ommmm. The cycles of nature, the cycles of life. The quietude that used to be the commonplace but seldom taken for granted.
Today we must surround ourselves with nonstop, narcotic audio and video that we never really see or hear. When the background we live with is chaotic, what do you think that does for the foreground? No need for polluting leaf blowers or high-powered lawn mowers that stealthily, continuously add to our stress levels. Yet we continue to crave these 'essentials' of contemporary life. Give me just the sound of leaves or snow falling instead.
Thanks, Ms. Renkl, for these precious moments of zen, especially on a Monday!
Ahhhh. Ommmm.
9
You give me hope. I share the sense of joy you find in small things, small beauties. Thank you.
15
I’m 78 and have never and will never use a leaf blower. It took a concerted effort by our community’s legislative representatives and citizens over a number of years here to get the restrictions on the use of leaf blowers we are now so very fortunate to have. The result is a substantial improvement of our lives! I raked leaves yesterday. The "secret" to doing this efficiently, with the least amount of effort, is to keep your thumbs up on the rake handle and use a sweeping motion.
13
@Alex B
Hi Alex! Thanks for sending me this great article. I am going to take it to the Mayor.
Hey Everyone out there - We have a group called Newton (CALM) Citizens Against Leaf blower Madness) in solidarity with Greenwich CALM and Sonoma CALM. I recommend starting a chapter in your municipality, working together to pass legislation that regulates leaf blowers. Join us! We are with you! Making life better for all ears, eyes and lungs.
2
What a lovely article, thank you.
I have always thought that if I was queen of the world I'd ban leafblowers (and turn out the city lights at night).
Thank you!
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@Susan Anderson'I live in a suburb with some areas which are more "rural," when I first got here, there were few lights on all night. As the area became more populated - more lights. Streetlights in developments, and in other areas, owners - who have usually moved up from NYC - who seem to want to recreate the effect of the all night light in a car lot. You can barely see the night sky anymore. Turn out the lights.
17
@Susan Anderson My niece's son visited me when he was around 10 years old. Lying on the deck one evening, he said he couldn't believe how many stars there were in Maine. He'd never been out of Manhattan.
4
In the city now, all floors of every skyscraper are ablaze. So wasteful, and terrible for the birds. Sadly, it's true in the country as well.
This is 9/11 tribute specific, so complicated! https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/9-11-tribute-in-light-birds.html
Wonderful! Ms. Renkl you are an artist with words and I thank you for each and every essay. Personally, I use a wide plastic rake. And I move A LOT of leaves. A walk in my yard on a windy fall day is almost as good as golf.
7
A precious moment. In the most fleeting season, where golden days shed their spectacular garments and don widows' weeds.
Around most suburban neighborhoods, using the word loosely, most of the leaf blowing isn't done by owners, or owners' children, anymore: hired landscapers mow, and blow and plant and feed. They don't walk their dogs, they don't clean their houses, they don't shop for groceries: they are less in touch with the seasons than an 18th C. English lord of the manor.
But in truth, I'll run my mower over most of the leaves - as soon as we have a dry enough day - which will mulch them up and allow them to quickly absorb back into the earth.
( I hate raking).
7
My neglected back lawn looks almost as good covered in leaves as it does when covered with pure, white, snow.
9
I don't use a leaf blower, but I don't rake either. I just watch as the leaves fall and the winds blow them where they may, usually up against the roots of other bushes and trees, protecting them from the coming hard freeze of winter. That's the way it was before our species arrived, and that's how it will be after we've gone.
31
That is the essence of being IN life, not just muddling through. I miss that fall ritual--it's not quite the same in the South as it is in the North where I grew up. Everyone should have that experience. Cool, crisp, quiet fall days. Simply magical.
14
Some of my most cherished memories are time spent in the silence of nature.
I vividly remember a campsite in the middle of the Rangley lake chain in Maine when canoeing. After a very tiring transit across the lake paddling into the wind, I found the site as the growing clouds foretold a storm in my future. I pitched my tent and secured the gear. Then, in the stillness of the afternoon, resting after my labors, I watched an osprey swoop across the lake and pluck his afternoon meal, a large silvery fish, out of the darkening waters.
We need stillness in our lives as an anodyne to our increasingly contentious times. Thank you, Ms. Renkl.
12
Thank you Margaret Renkl for another lovely piece of writing to lighten a gloomy world.
18
A very beautifully written essay that reflects my views about how to honor leaves, the work in yard work and our national political situation at this time in history.
Remember those who, as a group of people, are coerced into living in jail cells, and housing projects without yards; they have no leaves and no desks and no concept of planting bulbs for a spring that is certain. They are connected to us because our affluence is their misery. If we are the tree, then surely they are the leaves who must fall. In our America, to the degree that we are free, they must be brave.
6
This wonderful piece puts me in mind that the best way to do something is not always the easiest way.
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@MKlik
Sometimes too the best way to do something is not to do it.
2
My back is sore but after raking and bagging six bags of leaves on Saturday in the lean autumn light I felt I earned that Manhattan and hearty dinner later that evening. I quite enjoyed it, pleased that I still have the strength and energy for the chore. Chapter one of the chore I mean; I live on a corner lot, and next weekend will surely bring more of the same.
6
As I get older, my tolerance for noise diminishes and my appreciation for manual work increases. I’ve always raked leaves and enjoyed the feeling of sore muscles and the sense of accomplishment, no matter how temporary. Thank you for showing that I’m not alone, as I never see anyone else doing it. Last year I bought a new metal rake that is much more pleasant than my old plastic one. If you like raking, try charcoal grilling. I gave away my gas grill and now enjoy slowing down enough to light the fire 20 minutes before I’m ready to cook. The smell makes up for not being able to burn the leaves like we did when I was young in North Carolina.
18
Thank you. Raking leaves can be a moving meditation. The ability to move and experience the subtleties is a gift you reminded me of.
12
I have found a Kindred spirit in Margaret Renkl . I'm one of the few people in my Nashville neighborhood who knows what a rake is. The obnoxiously loud and smelly leaf blowers are everywhere and seem to be somewhere nearby all day and every day. Thanks for the meditative hints about how to live well despite the annoyances of urban life.
15
A lovely, inspiring message. Also helpful. I have tried to bag leaves little by little, particularly to avert their getting caugt in the rain and stick to the brick patio. One day the idea of the blower was unacceptable and I reached for the rake. Great. I easily gathered a bagful and considerably lightened the load that would have been pummeled by the rain. I was also reminded that in the hard to reach areas, the winter will take care of that. Thank you Ms Renki
6
I approached this article thinking it was a metaphor for politics. I was so happy to see that it was about leaves! Then I found a whole community of kind folks touched by Margaret's observations and insight. They lifted me up, made me thankful that I downsized to a tiny yard all mine, that at 73 I am lucky to be healthy enough to rake it myself. So grateful for this lovely piece of writing and the people it inspired.
37
@Holly Trahan I think it is a metaphor, for life rather than politics.
Loved the piece and the equally lovely illustration!
5
I have taken the time to note the colors of the sky as the sun sinks behind the northern hills of the Hudson highlands. The mix of coral and pink I can only see when the sun leans south.
I have noted that the hawks are gone, even the fledgling that kept the yard particularly still and quiet this fall; but the nuthatches and juncos are back.
I've marveled at how green the grass is this close to Thanksgiving, and watched the deer change from reddish brown to a somber, grayer hue that blends with the trunks of trees.
And I fired up the walk behind blower and cleared the property of the leaves, because frankly, I'd still be out their raking next week, and the week after that, to pile and haul the detritus left behind by the maples and the hickories, and the dinner plate leaves of the sycamore. There's apple and mulberry in there too, as well as poison ivy that I missed and didn't cut off trunks, and bittersweet. An acre can catch a lot of leaves after the winds form the north west blow them into your yard.
We all have our ways of exploring the silence. Sometimes we just don't have the time before the snows come to indulge. So we get the job done with noise and efficiency; but we take the time to look around us when we are done.
7
Lovely! Many thanks Margaret.
4
Thank you for a wonderful piece of thinking and wisdom. I will share this with friends and family.
3
Love the metaphor but the best part of this piece, for me, is the evocation of the memory of Fall leaf raking with my now grown children. After about 20 minutes of raking, I would look over to see my adolescent son, ear buds in place, doing some serious air guitar thrashing with his rake. Wonderful memories! Thanks
6
This brought back so many memories. In the South before grass lawns took over, yards were viewed as pristine when they had no grass, just sand and dirt that were "swept" religiously once a week. I hated that chore so much; would much rather have been reading a good book in a room corner somewhere. But just like planting flowers (something picked up from my grandmother unbeknownst to me at the time), I still rake my leaves as I did many years ago. I also pick them up with two old car tags to put into the bags. Some old habits never die. I also love the smells Margaret so aptly describes. What a wonderful writer she is....truly magnificent.
8
@Sybil Bullock
Car tags! What I great idea! I'm putting that into practice this week.
@Sybil Bullock
I had to stop and think what you meant when you said car tags. Where I live, we call those license plates.
1
I love this. Thank you. I’ve raked all my life. My small urban yard is home to numerous trees and the volume of fallen leaves is immense. I am 65. The raking consumes much time in the fall. But it’s precisely as you describe, an opportunity to pay attention and appreciate the astonishing abundance of life even in this small space — the squirrels and chipmunks and garter snakes and finches and rabbits and raccoons, plus all those creatures too small for me to see or hidden under the soil. And the sun and clouds and beautiful pewter November light.
14
I lived south of the Mason Dixon line for 25 years. While I enjoyed my time there, made many friends, even learned to love bourbon, I just couldn’t take another minute in another red state, especially with the rise of Trumpism. So I moved to Massachusetts, where I went to school.
I found bipartisan government, reasoned politics, and a booming economy founded on eternal liberal policies that allow businesses to thrive in the most productive innovation hub in the world. We even have a republican Governor, Charlie Baker, who works so well with Boston’s Mayor, Marty Walsh, they may as well be twins.
Sure we have our problems (I’m talking to you MBTA and Keolis), but we are the model for success in a divided America. Stop trying to figure out what’s wrong in red America, and start understanding what’s right in blue America so we can all live in purple harmony.
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@Jeffrey Schantz Love that phrase, "live in purple harmony." The sound of my teenage years hums in my brain. Yes, let's.
2
Thank you for depicting my backyard so eloquently; The colors and shapes are splendid. This year I was preempted by early snow, making it slushy and slippery. A joyous chore gives you time to contemplate and ponder the life in the woods. Thank you for sharing your wonderful feelings !
6
Thank you for this wonderful moment of zen.
We don't have to be exhausted by our resistance, we can do it with joyfulness and a sense of renewal.
22
@JABarry Doing Zen right
Having raked leaves for over 65 years, I can tell you it is a chore. Nothing wrong with chores, and if we could harness the wind to help move the leaves in the desired direction and to the desired resting place, we would do just that, and that, without any romantic attachment, is a leaf blower.
A combination of blowing and raking seems to be the best approach over all, said not to sit on the fence, much, in this debate, but simply because both have their place. A rake can do a much better job, but a blower is so much easier, and men and women, alike, always tend toward economy of effort. The yard looks beautiful, when it is covered with leaves, and looks just as beautiful when free of them. There is something to be said for both sides, now.
I'm not sure why people are opposed to leaf blowers, but they're opposed to snow blowers, too. So, it must be the noise, I guess. For those that want to sleep in, and there are plenty of those types, there has been considerable backlash expressed in opinion piece after opinion piece about "the noise." I don't really see this article as much different than that, with the exception that it tries to be flowery and witty about it. That's dishonest in many ways. There is just no way that raking the leaves on an acre or more size property is fun.
What this article misses, though, is that there are now battery operated blowers that make less than half the noise and work well in combination with raking. It's less romantic sounding but works.
8
@Reuben Ryder
It is the noise, the noise, and the noise. What gives you the right, public or private, to do injury to your neighbor’s eardrums? We, as neighbors, I hope, would not tolerate incessant barking dogs or your neighbor importing a blaring rock band on weekends. These are nuisances. As for snow blowers, if you have a driveway or sidewalk to clear in 15 minutes, perhaps your neighbor can be accommodating and ignore the intrusion. On the other hand, if you are going to use a snow blower to clear an acre of your land and extend that noise on your neighbor, perhaps that would be unreasonable. Did not Robert Frost say something about “good fences making good neighbors”? An updated Robert Frost poem would suggest offering a bit of consideration for your neighbor’s eardrums and quiet enjoyment of his or her land and house as opposed to baneful neighborhood leaf blowing.
37
@Reuben Ryder
"It must be the noise," you guess? Sadly, it seems you have adjusted, like many people, to the intolerable level of machine noise that assaults us all daily.
I live across the street from a beautiful park and love to sit on a bench at sunrise and watch the light change as I hold the people I love in my heart. As you can see, it is not my sleep that is interrupted by the loud blowers that arrive to do what a broom could do so much more respectfully. (And the broom would be better for the workers' ears too.) It is my soul that is being attacked.
Some mornings I bike over the beach, four blocks away, to watch and meditate before the majestic sea and sky. But there too, machines intrude--and not all of them are doing useful work like cleaning. The arrival of model drones on the scene is a plague. They swoop and zoom and hover, all the while making a loud buzzing sound. Who wants to feel as if he/she is in a war zone?
Please don't write our plea for silence off as an attempt to be "flowery and witty." What is at stake here is more profound and more precious than efficiency. It is our very human nature, body and soul, that requires peace and quiet for growth, for health, for community, for survival. At least some of the time.
69
@Martina I have one neighbor, and he has a tractor. Geesh!
This will come as a surprise to you, living in Chicago and all, people don't clear an acre of land with a snow blower. They might use a leaf blower.
Clearing the area helps to prevent against forest fires, etc., which in our area makes people thankful. I guess it is the road least chosen in Chicago. While you were at it, you failed to say how a snow blower injures anyone's ear drums. Do you have evidence? Or are you just using "baneful hyperbole?"
In a world such as yours where people cannot tolerate an interruption even for a few hours a year, it must be a great strain on you given all the other noise pollutants that we are subjected to during the entire course of the year. A fence wouldn't help much, but if you insist, put one up.
Thank you. As a child growing up in Minnesota, I hated the chore of raking leaves. My little hands blistered on the cold Ash handle. The wind would regularly disperse my small piles and rows and I'd have to start over. I could jump in the leaf piles and smell the power of warmth and decay as my sisters and I would throw leaves at each other. Before fire ordinances, we would burn our leaves. I loved the smell of burning leaves, the dangerous thrill of tending the fire, and always shifting to avoid the smoke. Leaf blowers were an undreamable solution to the chores that kept me from my friends. But, while raking I could sing to the tempo of the rake. I could think. My mind would wander, explore, and make-up elaborate stories. I need to get back out and rake.
29
I spent a few hours Sunday raking leaves in my garden. Saturday had been too windy to do much good — the wind in Oklahoma really does come sweeping down the plains— so I waited a day. The exertion made me forget the disappointment of the past week. I compost my leaves, so I was already thinking of what I would do next spring with the rich product of my labors this fall and winter. I can hear the wind now at 2:30, and I know that by the time I wake much of my work from the previous day won’t be apparent, but that’s part of the cycle of life too.
Leaf blowers aren’t much of an issue for me. Most of them are used by lawn services in my neighborhood, and when they come I am usually at the office. I know the gardeners use them to blow leaves from the yard that they service into the street, where the wind carries them to my yard. That could antagonize me, but what’s the point? They just provide more material for my compost pile.
14
This was such a lovely read and so soothing in these fraught times. This past weekend I picked up the prettiest crimson and yellow leaves I could find to decorate our Thanksgiving table and also to gently iron between sheets of wax paper, as I learned to do as a child, and send to my grandchildren living in the States.
Living in the Northeast, I know they have plenty of leaves, but it makes me feel closer to them.
22
I do understand the necessity of non-burning ordinances in the suburbs and elsewhere, but ah how I miss the autumnal scent of burning leaves on the wind.
Many years ago when I was first married we lived on a farm in the country and was no need for raking. One time when my mother was visiting she asked my husband if he would rake up a small leaf pile and burn it so she could once again smell that most evocative of autumn scents.
I miss her - and that chilly smokey air.
22
Magnificent prose poetry. Print a copy. Get a magnet. Make room on the refrigerator door. It's ok to move one or two pictures of your kids and you'll probably forget to take the coupon with you when you go pick up the pizza anyway.
Put this there. In the space you made by moving a few things around a little.
41
"It will help you remember what the wind always teaches us in autumn: that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there."
Found myself raking leaves in the courtyard of a Japanese Zen monastery on a clear Fall day buffeted by wind. The 80-year-old Zen master slid open the front door with a big smile and that wind immediately died. I quickly raked up a pile which then flew everywhere as he closed the door.
Go-Roshi would have said, "Neither the leaves nor the wind are moving, it's the mind that moves."
Just because you see something doesn’t mean it's there.
13
As I pluck juicy oranges from the tree in my backyard, you have reminded me of my youth in the North.
Here the cool weather is a gods send, a moist slightly grey reminder that even the hottest, most brain melting weather, comes to an end.
The dry, cracked, fields have grown parched with waited all year for this drizzling gray season. Now we give thanks as the aloe grows plump, the squirrels steal some of our juicy orange bounty, and the election is finally over. More important than red or blue is the orange season. The season of pumpkin pie, friends, family, and for those marooned in the North, leaf raking.
It is time for giving thanks for what we have, and what we have achieved so far, because slow progress remains progress. My neurologist told me that when I was 14, that came up when a relative was given 6 months to live 14 years ago, and every miraculous day we have so many beautiful and amazing reason to give thanks.
4
My husband and I just raked the back yard leaves two days ago but they are coming down again today. :) Such beautiful colors... I have been collecting and bringing leaves in our house for years... feathers too. I keep them in a drawer in our sideboard. When my oldest daughter was getting married on our property a few years ago she came to me and asked if she could make boutonnières with some of the feathers and leaves for her future husband and the wedding party. I opened the drawer and we sat in the living room and she made a gorgeous little creation and the rest of us all copied her idea. They were beautiful and special. I kept a few after the wedding to save for her later. It was just so sweet. My daughter knew of that drawer and the contents since she was a little girl. I tried to raise two daughters to respect and love the outdoors and nature. This daughter became an Archeologist and her sister is a Life Science Teacher. Not a one of us owns a leaf blower. We all rake the leaves each year. feathers Being in touch with nature grounds us and the work of raking or planting the garden in spring are rituals that carry us through.
17
If America cannot "see" the path other countries are taking to at least make some minimal overall effort to reduce carbon emissions, and muster some attempt to also participate, then the hospitable climate that homo sapiens has known, flourished, and raked leaves under, will -in all likelihood- be not just "over" but far gone. And that sort of effort, already long ignored, postponed, and trivialized, will be further neglected unless there is finally an end to denial about what the US federal government is now doing to destroy such possibilities, and what the purported opposition political party is manifestly failing to do to thwart, replace and redirect it.
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My wife and I eagerly read everything that we can find of Margaret Renkl's writing since encountering her amazing essay: Playing Possum
The unlovely side of love
MARGARET RENKL OCT 31, 1996 4 AM
Nashville Scene
I just googled it, and it's even better than I remembered -
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Another simple and elegant reminder that the more we think we have advanced technologically the further behind as humans we have become.
We have gone so long doing nothing to feed our soul that we have failed to notice we have lost our soul.
24
I read this column after a day spent in frigid weather planting 50 bulbs -- little lumps, each as unimpressive as a dull chrysalis, that would incredibly transform into the fluttering colors of tulips and daffodils.
I agonized about the cost. Bulbs are expensive. Was it worth it?
I didn't want to get up off the couch -- it was 40 degrees out and windy and I'd get dirty.
I had to dig deep, and encounter worms and bugs, and place each bulb carefully, and then bury my hopeful work.
But I have faith in what will come. I did the planting. Though it seems improbable, I believe that after a long winter, my work will fill my postage-stamp sized yard with color.
Since the 2016 election, I've been hauling myself off the couch, getting dirty, encountering worms. As you do in certain seasons, I picked up the pace the past few months. No matter how unpromising or dull each effort seemed -- phone banking for FL and TN, "post carding" likely voters, prompting others with texts -- I had faith that what I did made a difference, that out of the grey, color would emerge.
The seasons and the natural world tell us over and over: it is never winter forever.
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My husband and I are in Washington State for a short visit. California is burning up, but here Autumn has blown in with clear crisp wind. We waded through waves of leaves today and marveled at the number of colors the leaves turn. I am trying hard to stay in the moment and not think of politics, or the fires, or anything but the beauty of Autumn. I need to refresh my mind after this grueling year. And back home we will cross our fingers that rain will come soon.
12
My six large oak trees have been especially productive of healthy- looking leaves and acorns this year. Plus I have what appears to be a bumper crop of fat healthy-looking squirrels inhabiting them. I expect to be raking my leaves for another two weeks before finishing the job and carting them away. In a world full of trouble and woe, leaves are a little island of sanity.
9
My six large oak trees have been especially productive of healthy- looking leaves and acorns this year. Plus I have what appears to be a bumper crop of fat healthy-looking squirrels inhabiting them. I expect to be raking my leaves for another two weeks before finishing the job and carting them away. In a world full of trouble and woe, leave are a little island of sanity.
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... leaves are a little island of sanity.
1
I live in Missouri, unfortunately in our neighborhood leaf blowers are a constant presence, so annoying.
My husband and I still use our rakes to pick some of the leaves. I observe the different shapes, colors and sizes of all the leaves. Thank you for writing about the importance of leaving leaves in the ground. We’ll think about spring to wait for those little creatures that take refuge under the leaves left.
Our yard only has native plants this has helped increase insect diversity year after year.
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I pick up the leaves in other yards and bring them home and put them on my desk. So grateful for the beauty.
9
Rake the stuff away from the fences, corners, house, and shrubs and mower mulch it away.
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@Lawrence Absolutely right, Lawrence! Power mulch the leaves into your Honda lawn mower's bagging attachment. Mulched leaves are smaller by a factor of 5.
2
The writer lives in Nashville: I lived in the south myself for a few years about 15 years ago. In my case it was in the suburbs north of Atlanta.
It was the first time I had heard a leaf blower. Never in my time living in Missouri and Michigan do I recall hearing a single leaf blower. But in Georgia, they were the pure evil that haunted my soul.
I would watch some lazy-perfectionist chasing the last leaf around his yard for 5 minutes when he could have merely reached down and picked up the leaf in five seconds.
In rural Vermont there seemingly are no leaf blowers even today. Most people seem to leave the leaves where they fall, except for some special areas that do get raked like the path to the house... A long winter and slow, wet spring seem to help the fallen leaves decay and fertilize.
Many people here actually heat with wood or at least supplement their furnaces with a fire in the wood stove on the coldest days and evenings. That is what I do.
And felling trees and creating firewood means something that makes a similar sound to a leaf blower; except deeper and throatier and all together more powerful - the chain saw!
14
Here, leaf blowers are a constant plague. Apt complexes, churches, schools, and lots of rich people who don't do their own lawns. Not to mention pesticides, which they blow around. This town bills itself as liberal and progressive and "green", but I've never seen so much waste and pollution anywhere else.
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Keeping something from nature at your work place is a wonderful practice. Not that many leaves on the Pacific coast but I always keep a seashell (recently gathered), pine cone, and a bit of drift wood close at hand. A small bunch of fennel too -- I love that licorice smell. Nature helps to ground us, keep us centered.
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I have a large weekend farm with about 3 acres of lawn under towering maples, red oaks, honey locusts and other leaf distributors. If you are beyond unread, you rake them... but if you love your lawn you will mow the leaves to a fine dust that gives a natural fertilizer over the winter that will reap rewards in the spring.
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Thank you so much, Ms. Renkl. Literally and metaphorically, your notes here are a beautiful consolation in this time.
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What a charming , beautifully written article.
I love your suggestion to keep the leaf close by.
Thank you Margaret!
24
We planted another sugar maple this fall, a pretty big one. Can't tell you how good that felt. When leaves began to fall we brought some inside. Winter came early here this year, single digit temperatures and a light snow cover. The leaves I missed will have to wait for Spring.
15
Something I pleasantly associated with fall, was the faint acrid smell of leaves being burned somewhere in the neighborhood. It was just part of the season, but now a distant memory as such past rituals are forbidden by local ordinances.
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@Robert SLOAN
Thank goodness...less burning ,in many places, for many reasons!
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Thank you. I did this today before reading, for your exact reasons. It’s a lovely experience. Such a happy memory, too. Have no idea why it was replaced with a machine of a neighbor’s that causes us to wear earplugs inside our own homes every weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up my leaf for my desk.
15
Thank you, a beautiful image for the sentiment that "this too shall pass". Much needed in my neck of the woods as well.
46
The trees in my front yard lose more leaves than can be raked up in a morning, so I bought an electric blower, but is can be used to suck up the leaves, mulch them and put them in a bag.
Then those mulched leaves go into a compost bin, so they do not get wasted at all. If i keep them wet they can go into the vegetable garden in the spring. I suppose the blower is annoying, but only need it a few days a year.
7
Oh, this is lovely. Thank you! I will take that crimson leaf from my back yard tree and place it on my desk. Then in spring when everything is reborn and is abloom, I will take that leaf and place it on the soil to be reborn again in its own unique way.
25
Our mountain cabin is on some sloping acres. Over the years a mile or so of paths have been made for very private walks. Come late Autumn, even early December, a joy of joys, we're on the south slope, little or no wind to bother our raking of those leaves, and just enough to clear the path.
A peaceful time.
18
Thank you Margaret for your soul soothing words - the first I have read in the NYT seemingly since forever. Heartening to know there are still such gentle reflective thoughts possible in an America so angry torn and fractured.
55
Beautiful. "When autumn leaves begin to fall", Nat King Cole's song, is a reminder of the wonderful season of a multicolored spectrum...and the wind!
13
I've often thought the Robert Frost poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" lacked an ending. Here it is.
28
I simply love your writing. Lovely, inspirational, and encouraging. Thank you for sharing your gift with us.
40
Something wonderful happened in my neighborhood this fall. Apparently everyone is reading the very latest literature about healthy eco-habits for your yard. And. Oh my, an explosion of color that lasts for weeks because...no one has raked their yards yet! It's gorgeous, photo-worthy and fabulous. I guess the by the next dry Sunday the air will be blasting with the sound of composting lawnmowers.
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@Emma Horton
I don't put poison on my lawn anymore, but the absolute best thing would be to let the lawn grow wild!
There is ONE house on my street with a front lawn that has turned into a flowery meadow of "weeds".
If I wasn't worried about being judged as "lazy", I would allow nature to take over my yard, too!
1
Americans agree on many of the issues that face is: from sensible immigration to gun restrictions to taxing the wealthy more.
A great American leader will remind us of that.
And this-
something 90% of us agree on:
Cleaning up our political system.
We can use a simple app to make a "Mass Viral Demand" politicians can not ignore.
"We The People 250."
A constitutional amendment.
1) max contribution to any candidate for public office - $250. Any level - city council to president.
2) same $250 limit for "political speech" (if a person or group wants to air a commercial taking a political view, the funds for that commercial, that political speech, can only be garnered in maximum $250 chunks. No billionaire or organization can command the airwaves with massive buys of political speech.)
3) all congressional districts drawn by non-partisan panels. A few states do this now.
4) no lobbying after leaving Congress. No employment by any company on which the politician voted.
5) complete disclosure of all financial holdings and tax records from any candidate and all sitting politicians.
6) automatic registration to vote at birth for citizens.
7) mailed ballots - done successfully in Oregon now. Paper can't be hacked.
8) extra provisions, drafted by experts in campaign finance for all other issues.
Our government is not for sale.
Our brave soldiers did not die for that.
We turn 250 in eight years.
$250 limit ammendment.
Our early birthday present to America.
182
@Paul King and just a reminder, we also have mail in ballots in Washington state. It works quite well.
8
So, where’s the App? $250 makes sense. Please, can we do This?
Thanks,
Fay
2
@Paul King: OK, but how do you PROVE you are a citizen then? the left opposes all attempts to have IDs for voting! (and yes, illegal aliens vote. I've witnessed this with my own eyes).
I use both tools. A blower to quickly form piles and the rake to pull the piles onto a strong 20 x 30 tarp for dragging off. One piece of advice: while leaning on your rake to contemplate the scent of the earth sounds lovely, a leaf rake will not support your weight and you will break the rake and the mood ;)
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@Chauncey Gardner
Based on my observations, the neighbors using snowblowers spend far more time chasing leaves than I (and many others) do easily raking them into neat piles. Raking is also good exercise. I understand the benefits of snowblowers (even inherited one that I'll use when I'm too feeble to shovel), but leaf blowers seem almost counterintuitive. To me it's nothing more than an arrested adolescent male fascination with noisy internal combustion engines.
29
As I read this piece I was reminded of the film “Being There”..... Chauncey Gardner tending.... them as I read the comments I saw your entry.
BTW I do as you do, a quick round up with the blower and rake to tarp.
Thank you for such a beautiful and poingnant essay. At a time of stress, discord, and apparent futility where the summer seems very far away indeed, I needed this.
88
As Ms. Renkl states working in the garden is the best way to meet the neighbors. Now that we had to taken the structurally unsound elm out of our back yard, we have none of our own leaves to rake. The friendly and super-conscientious neighbors on either side rake up our front yard where their trees' leaves fall.
At least I can still rake our back yard, although they have offered to take care of that, too. After raking, I pick the wonder berries. I am hoping that next year I will finally have a large enough wonder berry harvest for pies all around.
Last year I started to see the demon leaf blowers being used across the street as growling, stinking snow blowers. Ugh! Give me back the crystalline air and the scrape - flump of the shovel!
28
Margaret Renkl, you are a poet.
I love, LOVE your writings, whether about nature, animals, or politics.
LOVE your pieces.
This one, though, kind of takes the cake for me.
As a liberal, I’m often disappointed, sometimes elated, mostly simply hopeful that more people will open their eyes and hearts. So, yes. Making do is what I mostly do. I count on springtime.
Thank You for a wonderful column.
139
I raked for hours yesterday in the windy cold. I loved it. My muscles are sore today but it was worth it.
38
I would agree that - with all due respect to money - leaf blowers are the root of all evil.
Leaf blowers turn the gorgeous natural rhythm and fading light of autumnal gloaming into a misophonic hell.
When I was a boy, there were no leaf blowers.
I can still hear the relative golden autumnal silence of my youth, now in a galaxy far, far away.
Die, leaf blowers; die a horrible, violent death.
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@Socrates:"When I was a boy, there were no leaf blowers."
Right and we should also rake the leaves to the curbside and burn them.
4
@Socrates: I remember that too, but back then...I was a young whipper snapper and raking leaves was bracing and sometimes fun (jumping in piles of leaves!) and I could earn $5 for doing it. (That was real money back then.)
It is less fun as you get older and I'm 62 now. I've made my peace with the leaves though, thanks to my MULCHING LAWNMOWER. The grass needs cutting right up to snowfall, and this chops the leaves into fine mulch that composts into the grass over the winter. No raking (or very little).
Soc, I also remember you used to be able to BURN the leaves you raked -- in a sort of grate -- that was wonderful too. Oh the smell of burning autumn leaves! it was the nostalgic scent of the end of summer and the transition into the cold weather. But alas....my community and many others have banned leaf burning now.
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@Socrates
It's been a while since anything I read in the Times made be laugh out loud. Thank you!
6
Leaf blowers are a menace down here in deep red Oklahoma, too. Natasha and I, though, have not one rake but two. We find raking to be a deeply relaxing tonic when we are faced with the also dispiriting political noise.
57
Leaf blowers have nothing to do with red and blue politics, they are a ubiquitous plague in blue NJ.
2
Margaret Renkl weaves life lessons with the lessons of nature into our lives with assuredness but also with subtlety and those lessons always so spot on, so meaningful. Her writing style communicates big thoughts through nature. Being outdoors is a grounding(please excuse the pun) experience that brings life down to scale. As my grandmother said, "If you are troubled, grab a broom and let the worry melt away." As a professional gardener, my tool of choice is the rake. And my "leaf" is a vase of coleus cuttings, in honor of my grandmother and now also Ms. Renkl. Here's to hope!
46
This is beautiful, taken literally. Is there a metaphor to politics under the leaves in my yard, the dry crunchy ones on top and the soft, soggy ones on the bottom? Even to contemplate that risks ruining the moment.
Autumn is the season of dwindling daylight, a recurring coda to summer's glory. Spring is the season of rebirth. In the garden, the forest and in matters more faunal, before we get to spring we must endure winter.
34
@Bengal Richter: that is only true in certain climate zones. I live in the Midwest! we know all about winter, thanks. But what about those in Florida? California? Nevada? Texas? Hawaii? they experience winter quite differently! What does "winter" mean to those who have an endless growing season?
1
Lovely. But here in New England where the leaves fall thick and fast, I'm lazy so I rake the leaves over the roses in the garden bed and be done with it. I'll deal in the springtime when hope is present.
29
Just the thing to bed down the garden and to retain soil moisture, the single biggest contributor to winter kill.
2
What a wonderful essay and wonderful writer. Thank you.
62
I purposely keep a low maintenance yard. Minimal raking, minimal mowing...
That said, my neighborhood screams with leaf blowers, to the point that there is no respite. And you know what? It's one or two lawn services that all my neighbors need to hire because they can't bother themselves with a little of their own maintenance. (Spend some time outdoors, you may actually get to know your neighbors).
Weekends, that time where you want a little peace and quiet, they start up at 8:00, and go through the morning 'till afternoon. They fire up on weekday evenings under an office building nearby that acts as a resonance chamber, they never stop.
Thanks to the foresight of the fine city leaders of Portland (sarcastic), they seem to have changed the noise ordinance to allow these things to start earlier, and continue later in the day, even on weekends. This has robbed me of the catharsis of waiving the ordinance in front of the offenders.
I've seen parks employees with leaf-blowers on trails, and I was accosted by a leaf blower in a multilevel parking garage just yesterday!!
I've even had to confront someone using a leaf blower at 3:00 AM on an iced-up sidewalk, (see, people in Portland have no idea how to deal with the occasional real winter weather)
Use a rake! please, just use a rake!
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@j s: that is easy to SAY, but then are you a senior citizen? disabled? alone? have health issues? a single mom with small children? Not everyone has the fitness, health, stamina or lifestyle to rake leaves every weekend from late September until snowfall!! and not everyone can AFFORD a professional landscaping service to remove the leaves from their property!
3
@Concerned Citizen Professional services aren't needed to rake leaves. A local kid can do it just fine. Or a local grown-up.
6
Here in Chicago we have a number of trees in our yard — a red bud with its heart shaped leaves, a forest oansy redbud with even darker leaves, a crab apple, a pear tree, a cherry tree, a columnar dark leafed beech, a paper birch, and a tricolored beech with dark leaves too. So we have lots of trees and endless raking. For years we would dig trenches and bury the leaves in these trenches. Now, with increasing age, raking is enough and putting the leaves in two large compost bins suffice. As for leaf blowers . . . well, they are a bane, oftentimes interfering with the quiet contemplative aspects of putting our garden to bed. Better to watch the leaves waft to the earth from their lofty perches above, and contemplate the re-emergence of these buds and leafs five to six months hence in the Soring.
30
Thanks for the reassurance that "[i]n almost every situation where something is loud, obnoxious and seemingly ubiquitous, resistance is an option." Good how-to articles on that subject are always in season, but especially when November rolls around.
61
Margaret Renkl's admonition to get up and do something--to get up and make do--is a fit metaphor this week for anyone who's worried about the state of the larger world. Winter may be coming, Renkl seems to say, but spring always follows. Leaves fall and die, but they always nurture the earth. Always.
I'm reading her column on a chilly Sunday evening, but I plan to hunt for my rake tomorrow morning, no matter the temperature. As I work, I'll allow the leaves on the ground, the ones blowing in the breeze, and those still on the branches to sweep the cobwebs from my spirit. As for collecting leaves to bring inside the house, I plan to track down a ginkgo leaf for sure. Who knows what else I'll find?
95
As an avid gardener, this speaks to my soul. As a diehard Liberal in Kansas, it speaks to my heart. You are simply a fantastic writer, and I needed just this, after the past few weeks.
Best wishes.
293
Always up for a good leaf raking story. I spent 40 + years raking leaves so I consider myself pretty much an expert for residential leaf raking. Sorry to burst your bubble but the electric leaf blower is the way to go. Hours outside in the fresh, cool fall air just mindlessly moving the leaves around where ever you would like them. The rake? Oh no. Too much manual labor for this chore. Just the blower, pointed downward moving the leaves along to their resting place. Ah, yes.
12
Sorry, but it takes as many hours or more to use a blower as a rake.
3
@Don S - I'm holding out for a little solar number . . . with a silencer.
3
@Don S You spent 40+ years raking? Well, I've spent about 70 and, if i learned something in the process it's to keep your thumbs up on the rake handle, use a sweeping motion when you rake the leaves off your lawn, walks, etc., and that any leaf blowers are simply ridiculous. It takes me about half the time to rake than the neighbors with their blowers for about the same size yard, it's great exercise and no noise or pollution! THUMBS UP, my friend!
6