Leave the Leaves! 🌿

[LPBBEAR]

5. How bout....

not planting them in the first place.

My next door neighbor (now deceased) had a fascination with the whole planting trees thing. As a result he had a large maple about 4 feet from our property line. While Maples can be beautiful....at a distance, they are extremely dirty trees up close. First they produce huge amounts of leaves every fall. I typically spent a couple weeks each fall cleaning up leaves from his one maple tree. Time I could have used more productively. Additionally they produce a very sticky sap that rains down on anything below their branches. I had a car paint job ruined by this same tree. Another "special" benefit of the maple tree is the pernicious helicopter seeds that fly everywhere and into every narrow opening they can find including into the inner fenders on your vehicles where they eventually start causing rust damage. At one point a large branch from this same tree broke off and fell on my Van roof causing extensive damage.

After many years of cleaning up the mess I went to my neighbor and told him I would be calling a tree trimming service and have anything over the property line removed. He finally had the damn thing removed.

I also had similar issues to deal with at my elderly parents home near here when they were alive. A High School across the street from them had planted maples along the sidewalk adjacent to the school property. The prevailing winds carried the leaves and seeds across the street and on to my parents property. At times the leaves overwhelmed a 6 foot high fence and completely buried their RV to the roof. A huge mess!

I get the whole wildlife habitat thing in large open areas where such trees can be beneficial but in neighborhoods choose trees that are neighbor friendly and less dirty. Not cleaning up after trees like Maples and other similar trees is not an option in reality. They just produce too much debris to ignore. Do more research from the point of view of how much cleanup work will be involved for you AND your neighbors before you plant those trees. Your neighbors will thank you for the effort

You leave the leaves. I'll dump them on your property so you can do that.