[p38arover]

Gahh! I dunno how you Americans put up with autumn.

I have only one deciduous tree, a liquidambar (American Sweetgum), and the leaves falling from it are a pain. Having a yard full of them would be awful.

We have very few deciduous trees in Australia, thank goodness! Most of the deciduous trees here are foreign imports.

I'd get it cut down but at a cost of over $1,000 it is a bit much. Generally, our town councils won't let us cut down trees but they have no objection to getting rid of liquidambars.

Ron B.

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Last edited by p38arover; 05-17-2014 at 03:53 AM.

[Parallax]

I have only one deciduous tree, a liquidambar (American Sweetgum), and the leaves falling from it are a pain. Having a yard full of them would be awful.

You may not have many deciduous trees, but you have eucalyptus. Where I grew up, in Northern California, they were quite plentiful. Leaves can be easily raked up and disposed of. Eucalyptus sap, OTH, is a whole different story. The aroma of eucalyptus makes it worth it though.

[p38arover]

I should look up why our eucalypts were exported to the USA.

When I first visited the USA in 2009, I'd been up in WA for the first 3 weeks. When we drove down to Bodega Bay (to visit John Brabyn, founder of the rangerovers.net forum), I smelled the eucalyptus and had my Seattle friend stop so I could get out and smell the air. It was more noticeable there than it is here. I live at the base of the Blue Mountains - so named because of the blue haze from the eucalyptus terpenoids in the air)

[Tom S.]

Autumn is nothing. It's what follows autumn here that sucks.

[Rupert]

Autumn is nothing. It's what follows autumn here that sucks.

Amen and amen!

Raking leaves from a single tree would be a pleasure....last Fall my yard required almost 200 wheelbarrow loads of leaves to be raked and burned. Oak trees were the main shedders, but elm trees did their share of dropping too.

I leave raking the "Woods of Otis" to the squirrels, and you can see, they don't see it as a necessary thing.


Workers clearing dead trees before raking...


My street...gives some idea of the trees that shed in my area. Those funny clouds are "twister babies" that sometimes form after a large tornado passes by.

Regards!

[gaweidert]

Come to the northeast US when the leaves are at their peak. When I leave NY soon, it will be one of the things I will miss about the area. If you put a polarizing filter on the lens the colors really pop in the images.

BTW, my leaves get chopped up and bagged by the lawn mower. For there they go to the vegetable garden where they cover it over the winter. In the spring they get rototilled into the soil where they mulch into the soil. The plants absorb the nutrients and then we eat the veggies. So I guess you could say I eat the leaves that fall onto my lawn. Leaves are a great builder of good topsoil.

[Rupert]

I have had this idea about leaves forever, but am too lazy to experiment. There are tons of leaves every year, mostly they just go back to soil or are burned or hauled off someplace.

What is you took a heavy pipe with around a 4-6" inner diameter, long enough to hold a lot of leaves, and inserted a piston driven bya hydraulic pump to compress the leaves to a solid mass? You could then cut the result in lengths to fit your fireplace and have a tone of winter "wood"?
Sound crazy? Maybe, I'll never know, I'm converting my fireplace to natural gas...we have it everywhere around here in abundant supply! Hit a remote control and you have a fire! Beats chopping wood or compressing leaves!

Regards!

[condor27596]

We have leaves and pinestraw. But where you are every animal, rodent, and sealife is poisonous and trying to kill you LMAO

[p38arover]

We have leaves and pinestraw. But where you are every animal, rodent, and sealife is poisonous and trying to kill you LMAO

Pfft. A few snakes - ok, so the taipan is the world's deadliest; a few sharks with a few deaths this year - but South Africa also has Great Whites; a few crocodiles, they are a protected species like snakes. Besides, when was the last time you heard of anyone being killed by a croc in Oz - OK, there was one in January.

Spiders - there is the funnel web which is very deadly but no one dies any more as we have good anti-venene.

We don't have any other animals that will eat you. No bears here. There ain't any anti-venene for bears - except a well placed bullet.

See Australia’s Dangerous Animals: The Truth About Deaths.

[clackers]

I should look up why our eucalypts were exported to the USA.

Because until water from the Rockies was diverted after the gold rush, there were no rivers on the West Coast in the 19th Century. The Spanish hadn't been able to get up sustainably sized cities and many species of trees struggled.

Walking around LA I saw some outstanding examples of Western Australian red flowering gums. Huge, and very happy with their habitat!

[reeftool]

Autumn is nothing. It's what follows autumn here that sucks.

You got that right!
Autumn is a joy. The leaves are wonderful when they change color. It's still warm enough for outside fun and raking leaves beats shoveling snow any day.

But I rarely rake anymore. My final lawn mowing of the year usually grinds up most of the leaves. A lesson I learned long ago is that if I rake leaves, my neighbors leaves just blow into the yard and it looks like I never did anything. So now I just do a final mow and let the wind take care of the rest. I do rake one spot if the weather is dry and that's on one side of the house where sparks from the chimney could set the leaves on fire. Most years there's usually snow cover by that time.

[ChrisPlatt]

Yes but as kids we had lots of fun jumping into those big piles we raked up.
And oh the smell of burning autumn leaves...

Chris

[Rupert]

Yes but as kids we had lots of fun jumping into those big piles we raked up.

Jump in the piles of leaves around here and a dozen Copperheads will be looking to make you pay for it!

Regards!