2mo ago

They're called leaves for a reason.

83 comments

Too bad HOAs are far more concerned with making sure everything looks plain and perfect to the 70 year old humans walking on the street rather than giving any craps about wildlife.
- You think anybody is walking on the street in the US?
  
  I'm not American but my understanding is that many of those "suburban" residential blocks have sidewalks and you can walk around withing the confinement of your block. However blocks are isolated from each other and you need a car to go somewhere else.
  
  Absolutely. There’s a lot in my neighborhood… And it’s annoying when there’s a perfectly good sidewalk right there.
  
  Plenty of them do. And I hate it. They need to be on the sidewalk, not the street.
  
  America build the suburbs as a big fake playground where you can walk your dog.
  
  You think otherwise?
  
  Depends where you live. I am in Denver and only use the car a few times a week, mostly during ski season.
  The rest of the time I walk.
  
  Yeah, quite a few
- Don't worry, they're also hostile to humans under the age of 70
- In a previous house I rented, the HOA ladies would drive around the neighborhood roughly 3 times a week. There were less than 200 homes in the whole subdivision. Even if you walked slowly, it would only take an hour to walk the whole thing, but instead they drove.

I've decided to leave the leaves on my yard and I swear my neighbors are mowing and leaf blowing twice as much just to spite me.
IDGAF. I'd rather have fireflies and bumblebees than human neighbors
- And then they complain that their fruit garden isn't working.
- Fireflies were spectacular this year.
  In the front yard I let the wind take whatever leaves it takes. In the back I rake a path to the gates. Those leaves get put in a large open bin along my fence which makes nice soil in a year of so. Everything else is as nature intended.
  
  I’m hoping I can stem the collapse. I saw three fireflies this past summer. Which is a 3x improvement over the summer before that.
  But coming from a place where I could walk through the woods on a dark night just by the light of fireflies it hurts my soul to be somewhere so sterile.

Or realize that there is still tons of land that isn't maintained and is actually a better habitat for bees anyway. Even in your own neighborhood ther is plenty of places that don't get tended to. This is really just a diversion to redirect people from all the things the ag industry does that harm the bees on a scale us individuals, even collectively can't hold a candle to. Remember when they tried to convince us that leaving the water running while we brush our teeth was a major usage of fresh water. But again, compared to the ag industry, all household water use is a drop in the bucket.
- Sure but.. It's still a really good advice and I'm glad someone posted it. I rarely rake away leaves for reasons like this, and this gives me one extra reason to not do so.
  That doesn't mean you're wrong, but we can all be right : fight the important battles for large scale effects while enjoying the small scale effects of individual actions.
  
  I think that they're just railing against the smoke show that would have us believe that our individual actions are more to blame than industry as a whole. You can recycle, you can drive a electric car, you can even generate your electricity and store it locally in a battery and not even use the grid but even if we all did that without change to heavy industry we are still screwed.
  One small example of this is how big tobacco and big oil have used exactly the same tactics to distract us from what's really going on and protect their profits regardless of the harm to us as a species.
  Would you like to know more? https://www.eenews.net/articles/big-tobacco-had-to-pay-206b-is-big-oil-next/
- For insects, pristine lawns are a huge problem. This isn't quite comparable.
- It's been a while since I've seen the data, but isn't the American lawn considered a major biome now? At least compared to wildlands.
  Between lawns and monocropping in the US, yes we need to fight back against those activities and favor rewilding.
  For those reading, start by introducing native plants to your parcel. Let nature do it's thing. Then, consider going vegan since animals need multiple times the amount of land and water to grow: resources to grow the plants, then resources to grow the animals. Then, consider donating to organizations like The Xerces Society, the Wildlife Conservation Network, or MarAlliance. Better yet, find something local to you and join up!
  
  You either missed the point, or you have fallen for the propaganda. Industry is a much higher % of the problem than your lawn. But they want to distract you by making you think you should do something with your yard to fix things. When the majority fail to do anything, they will feel like, well I didn't do my part, so I can't demand industry do anything. This allows them to keep destroying the environment. It's a great tactic, worked well with plastic for a very long time. Your just helping them. Instead vote for people who care about us and the planet more than corporate profits. Regulate the industries and support lab grown meats.

I'm pretty sure if I didn't do any yard work by May I'd have the city repossessing my home.
- Start a movement to stop the city from forcing people to cut their yards. It creates smog, kills the insects we need for food, damages the native plants, wastes money, and looks ugly. Natural yards are awesome.
  
  How does cutting a yard contribute to smog? The Lawnmower?
- You could try a no-mow lawnternative: https://www.thespruce.com/lawn-alternatives-8657762
- absolutely insane law there.

I don't view this as a "pick up the leaves or not" false choice. I leave the leaves in some areas and mow over/pick them up in others. They're literally free mulch and compost
- If you leave them all in place they all turn into free mulch and compost anyway. And you avoid using the fossil fuels to power the mower you don't need in the first place.
  
  I have a battery powered mower and utility has done a pretty good job of incorporating renewables into their mix
  I also have some small spots where I want grass
  
  That's probably the least efficient way to mulch that stuff, don't just leave it out like that
  And you avoid using the fossil fuels to power the mower you don't need in the first place
  Ah, should we all be using the push powered ones, then, cuz those are fucking terrible. Not having grass is nice for those who don't live where it's a legal requirement, but that's out for many people, and you do have to cut it or you'll get a different law visit instead
- Go to a farm, ask for stall muckings....free compost.
  
  You will want to be sure to sift them a little, as there will be a lot of stones in them, in my experience.

until it snows, then it becomes a slip-n-slide for all.
- our yard and sidewalks / pavement becomes slime slick if they're left around. I doubt there are many bees in my leaf piles, it's been raining for a month straight.

Just remember that month suggestions online are for certain geographic areas. You might need to move them earlier or later. (The best rules I have seen is when nights are above 50 F in North America)

As a Brit we were always taught to gently disturb leaf piles before jumping in them or throwing them into the fire, just in case hedgehogs were in there. The habit has stuck, although I now just rake our leaves up onto the mulched beds and leave them. The chickens will then pull them apart and consume any living thing unfortunate enough to live there.

I'll (electrically) blow leaves off of walkways, but the vast majority of them stay put. Fuck a fucking lawn.
- Fuck a fucking lawn.
  Is that kinda like a putting green but for...?
  
  I thought that's what couches were for...?
  
  every lawn is a f-cking lawn if u f-ck lawns

I deal with 3 massive city-owned (and admittedly beautiful) chinquapin oaks and two privately owned red maples on a 1/3 acre lot. If the leaves don't get removed then everything dies as a result of the acidity and thick leaf cover that also wont fully decay before the next autumn. There is no room for a compost pile of that size considering that the leaves couldnt make up more than half of it. I'm not a fan of grass lawns but the city and the HOA have to give the 'okay' before a lawn change can be made.
- Same situation here. We need to remove at least part of the oak leaves. They take years to decompose on their own and they just smother ensuring else that wants to grow there. We try to leave a few piles until spring but if we didn't manage the situation, the only plants thriving in the garden would be oaks.

Brings nutrients into your soil so you have a healthier lawn
- That has not been my experience. The leaves wreck the ph of the soil and block light from letting grass grow.
  
  Not much grass growing when it’s -20 out but you might have too many leaves so they don’t decompose fast enough during your winter

In other words, leave nature alone and let it do the thing it designed itself to do

I always mulch mine with my mower. Only bugs that might be in them is scorpions, grubs, ants, or the odd snake sometimes

And now I'm even more glad that where I live they leave the leaves under the tree. Didn't know that bumblebees live under that leaves left under the tree. Now I wanna leave a commest about the cute bumblebees that live under the leaves that someone left under the tree.
P.S. sorry, couldn't hold myself, sorry:)

How do I know when the queens are out?
- Oh, you'll know.
  
  Stupid sexy bumblebee butts.
- Early spring would be the easiest since no other "types" of bumblebee would be flying.

wuht

!nolawns@slrpnk.net vibes.

A tree is like a quiet roommate, but makes a huge mess before leaving to travel internationally for half the year.

I really fucked up my lawn by putting red clover down in addition to white. Red clover is perineal and grows tall and falls flat on its side. It decays into this horrible straw like shit. I hate it. Horrible horrible decision.
Because it's sort of fucked for a few years I guess, I've been a lot more hands off with leaves. Because hey, even if it kills off some of the stuff there then that's fine by me. I think I only mowed once this year. I only blow leaves off the driveway and onto the yard.
This summer I'll see the fruits of my labor. I'm really curious to see if there are substantially more fireflies.

Colony collapse was due to fungicides being sprayed in the day. -Bees don't need extra pollen (they have plenty of food to spare which is why we have honey as a product), and they don't need people's lawns (pick the leaves up before winter).
Leaving leaves is just being an asshole neighbor making safe paths for vermin to get into houses, and reduce the value of neighboring properties.
- Since HOAs were mentioned, I assume the previous comment was about the US (unless there are countries in the Old World where they are as prevalent, but I know of none). Domestic honey bees aren't native to the US, and many native bees are endangered for many different reasons. In the rest of the world as well, honey bees aren't the only bees, or the only pollinating insects, and each pollinator has their plants of predilections, some species of plants depend entirely on some species of insect, so insect biodiversity is very important. Protecting native bees in the Americas has particular stakes, because they're the most adept at pollinating the native plants which are the cornerstones of several ecosystems.
- Please cite your sources.
  
  Does his ass count as a source?
- Lmfao
- Bumble bees do not produce large amounts of honey.
  They keep enough food for a couple of days bad weather, but otherwise they don't overproduce at all.
- Leaving leaves also kills the grass under them.
  
  It most certainly does not. Source: have a tree, a lawn, and no interest in spending time raking leaves.
  
  oh no! Anyways...

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