Chicago Weblog

The last couple of weekends have been warm and sunny (highs in the sixties), which is considered rather unusual for mid-November in this part of the country.  I have a Louisville gardener’s almanac by Fred Wiche, considered by many to be the dean of Louisville gardeners.  This book was published in the early ’80’s, and I’m sure it was based on his experiences in the area during the sixties and seventies.  The chapter on November says that we should have gotten our first snowfall last week.

I’m not complaining.  I picked peppers out of the garden for tonight’s support.

I get a lot of leaves to rake this time of year.  Up until today, I had been raking a bunch into a pile, stuffing them in a bag, raking up another bunch, stuffing them in the bag, so on and so forth.  I didn’t mind the raking so much as the stuffing in the bag; it was cumbersome to pick up the leaves and control the bag.

Today I decided to break up the task into two parts.  Early in the morning I raked up the leaves into a number of piles around the yard.  I left them there until the afternoon.

When I went to pick up the leaves and put them in the bags, I found that letting them sit for few hours caused them to settle together somehow so that they were much easier to pick up and drop in the bag.  Immediately after raking leaves into a pile, they are fluffy and hard to control, but after letting them sit it was almost like the leaves jumped into the bag by themselves!

Now, this could be related to the types of leaves that fall into my yard, so your mileage may vary, but I recommend every leaf raker at least give it a try.  (BTW, my wife thinks this is crazy.)