At this time of year there is a welcome contrast between my property and that of many of my neighbors who have lawn services. For them and the near constant arrival of professionals with large and noisy equipment, the goal is to erase any signs of untidiness in the form of decaying plants or random leaves on the ground. Their yards are swept clean, beds cut down and lawn cut low ready for winter. My property is a bit different in that my goal is to do as little as needed. This is different than as little as possible. Doing as little as possible implies an inherent laziness or inattention to something that should be done. But in gardening sometimes less is more because my goal is to leave an environment that will be interesting to look at and provide food and shelter for birds and other creatures who don’t go south for the winter. My motivation is not inattention but attention to what is best for the surrounding plants and creatures that I live among.
So emerging from my soon-to-be dormant beds are the darkened skeletal remains of coneflowers, black-eyed Susie’s, monarda hanging on for a bird to pick through their seed heads. The winterberry and beautyberry bushes are filled with red and blue fruit, respectively, ready to fill the stomachs of a passing flock. Acorns are scattered ready to be hoarded by the local squirrels. Old seed heads lay on the beds as food and to become next year’s seedlings. The crabapple tree holds on to tiny shriveled red orbs. The hostas are spent and beginning to become a sticky, gelatinous, splayed mass of leaves. I used to cut them down and compost the remains but now I wait until the leaves almost disappear into the soil; by Spring there is nothing left save a few buds in their centers waiting for a warming cue to grow.
As most of our beds are mulched, I rake the leaves into them, letting them rot over the winter to feed the new growth of blueberries and other acid-loving plants in the Spring. Removing a few leaves from one of the gardens, a black salamander exposed to the morning chill wriggles a bit. I replace its blanket. I wait to rake until there are more leaves to be seen than grass or soil. If I am lucky I have to rake only twice but more often it is three or four times. The first raking seems fruitless as I see many hangers-on above. But if I wait much longer, patches of grass will die under leaves that have been sitting for nearly a month.
Then with a big wind or rain, a few of the trees decide to release all of their leaves simultaneously. The sky is filled with maple, oak, tulip, and beech leaves. The Japanese maples drop all of their leaves in a big pile around their base smothering everything around it. Time to get out the rake yet one more time.
