Not just a popular song by Roger Williams, autumn leaves are an annual blessing and nuisance. They are a blessing because of the beautiful colors they turn before succumbing to gravity, but eventually they must yield to Newton’s discovery and clutter the yards, streets and gutters of our fair city. Then the issue becomes what to do with them?
Leaf disposal is handled in various ways in different places. In the old days, we’d rake them onto a pile and burn them, creating a pleasant aroma that was a true signature of autumn. Alas, burning fell out of favor for a variety of reasons and thus new approaches developed. Within the metro area, no matter where you are, you will need to get a permit from the local government to do any leaf burning. That is, if your area hasn’t banned the practice altogether.
Some municipalities encouraged residents to merely sweep the leaves to the curb where a city truck would come by and suck them all up. That agreeable process has been abandoned in most places with Roeland Park and Westwood being the exceptions.
So, if you can’t burn them and the city won’t suck them up out of the gutters, how about just sweeping them into a storm sewer? That won’t work either because cities have realized that the clogged sewers are a hazard to everyone. That leaves (pun intended) the option of raking the leaves into a pile and carting them off. Some places that is easier than others with limitations on the amount of yard waste that can be picked up by trash trucks each week.
Perhaps a compost pile works if there aren’t too many leaves. Or pay a yard service to rake and carry off the detritus of your oak trees; a tidy but expensive alternative.
The easiest solution is to wait for a strong wind and allow the leaves to become a neighbor’s problem which evokes Robert Frost’s rejoinder that “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”.
