Mount Saint Oak Tree

In this spot once stood the eighth wonder of the natural world: a massive pile of leaves that I would argue could have been the largest in residential Springfield. Known as Olympus to the squirrel gods in the neighborhood, the mound stood, at its pinnacle, nearly 5 feet tall with a base of 24 by 21 feet. I did a little math, as I often do, and figured that's over 1000 cubic feet or almost 7500 gallons of leaves! That's a lot of compost.

The reason for this suburban monstrosity is really two fold. One of the best things about our current home is that we have over 30 mature trees on our property. These serve for wonderful shade and low utility bills in the summer and a beautiful looking landscape all year round. However they also provide a variable monsoon of foliage every fall. In years past I've tried everything from raking, blowing, mulching, mowing, burning, and bagging. With Becca and I starting a garden a couple of springs ago I decided to keep a hold of some of the leaves and begin a compost pile to provide us with some good soil. Well over those last few years we accumulated more than we could possibly decompose in my life time.

Fast forward now to this fall when I came to the realization that no self-respecting home buyer is going to want to purchase a house with the mecca of arborist sitting in their backyard. So, as my oh-so-patient wife has pointed out in our other blog here, I have been spending a lot of time in the yard trying to both mange the current crop of deciduousness while also trying to chip away at the existing mighty monolith. At times the battle seemed feudal as the rate of leaves coming in to the pile was greater than that going out, but in the end I did prevail. This weekend, with a welcome December warm spell, I managed to burn the last bits of the pile and check one more thing off my list. With our new lot being completely bare of any trees at this point I can honestly say that I'm going to really miss the shady summer afternoons, but when fall comes around I'll be happy spending the afternoons inside with my family instead of battling an army of foliage outside.