NOVEMBER 9, 2026 – It’s that time of year again when homeowners in these leafy parts clear their yards of foliar splendor. That seasonal beauty is soon forgotten once the arbors have been stripped of their colorful garments. Soon the next order of beauty will be dressed in white.
And again, I’m surprised by how so many people perfectly smart people fall prey to the time-honored autumn ritual of raking, blowing, stuffing, carting, sweeping leaves off the grass.
I wrote about this last fall—I’m sure of it—but without effect: old habits die hard. On each of my walks last weekend, I was treated to a collage of real-time Norman Rockwellian images. The only missing props were tobacco pipes clenched in the teeth of hard-raking homeowners. For the record, by the way, no one was pulling a “Roger”—what I called the practice of our next-door neighbor (named “Roger”) when I was a kid. After raking all the burr oak leaves across his lawn down to the street gutter, he’d splash gasoline (at 19 cents a gallon) all along the top of the 100-foot-long mound of leaves. Next came the matches and three or so Fa-RUMPs! as the gas-soaked leaves exploded in flame. Our neighbors in Falcon Heights—in 2026—know better than to burn leaves. Frankly, as far as I’ve observed, everyone in the Twin Cities knows better. But few people know better than to rake, sweep, blow and bag their leaves and haul them away.
The gorgeous weather this week brought folks out in droves to clear their yards of arboreal excess. As I hiked to Little Switzerland, I found great amusement in the array of equipment my neighbors put so earnestly to the task. The first man at work along our street deployed an industrial-gauge lawn vacuum with a large black bag attached. It seemed disproportionately powerful for such modest yardage. Next door to him was a raker, but the wind worked against him—until it helped him, before it switched back to making a mess of things. As my grandmother would say in such situations, “He couldn’t win for losing.” In the next yard was an acquaintance preparing to walk his dog. He confided prankishly that his method was wind-assisted. “I wait until the wind is blowing from the west. Then I rake to the east, making sure most of the leaves wind up in T _ _’s yard [next door].” Across Hamline Avenue into St. Paul was another set of rakers and blowers, including an older woman whose wimpy little electric leaf blower wined like an unwilling child performing a chore without allowance.
Near the entrance to Little Switzerland, I encountered my friend Phil, dressed in blue jeans and a blue flannel shirt. On the ground was a blue tarp onto which he was raking blue ribbon champion oak leaves. “You’re wearing the color of victory!” I called out before he noticed me. We often talk politics, and in the run-up to the election, the Vietnam veteran who is now a news and political junkie had grown increasingly anxious.
“Yes, and how!” he replied. We talked politics, of course, for 10 minutes before switching to the matter at hand—raking leaves. “Yeah,” said Phil, “I drag them off to the side over next to my garage. I’ll haul them away during the week when the traffic into the compost site isn’t as bad as it is on the weekend. I put plastic down inside the car (a RAV4), and shovel in the leaves.”
That’s an alternate system. Most people, I noticed, bag their leaves, but I didn’t observe anyone compressing the contents. They’d just drop leaves into a large bag until the container was full, then tie it off and fill the next bag. Years ago I found that if I stomped on a pile of leaves, sat on them, rolled on them, broke them down as much as possible, I could consolidate things down to far fewer bags and a single trip to the local compost site.
The neighbor who wins the capacity prize, however, is B _ _ _. A concrete contractor, B has lots of heavy equipment that he stores on a lot adjacent to the south end of the fairgrounds. His machinery includes a full-on dump truck and a skid loader. Today I saw his truck roll past—its bed full of leaves. I didn’t see his Bobcat in operation, but I’m sure B used it effetively as a leaf compressor.
Me? Until today, I could rely on the excuse that our maples and birches hadn’t yet released their leaves, but now, one of the maples is stark naked. Soon the other trees will follow suit—or rather not; they’ll be free of their leafwear too. But instead of raking, I intend to mow. That’s right, I plan to mow and mulch our leaves, first by running the mower north and south, then east and west, until the leaves are in small bits and pieces that can more easily return to the soil. I mean, why rake and blow what should be one with their origins—the good earth? Why shouldn’t we interrupt nature’s extraordinary process by which trees—left to their own methods—feed themselves?
For the record, I’m fully prepared to be ridiculed by the neighborhood PhDs who blow and bag their leaves without a second thought. The geniuses might have the goods on me when it comes to brains, but I’m at a clear time advantage in not having to wait in line to enter the compost site. Plus, come springs, we won’t have “Keep Pets and Children Off Treated Grass for Three days from ____/27” warning flags stuck in the corners of our yard. Our mulched leaves will do the trick.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
