My maple trees don’t know when to give up.  They are always the last ones in the neighborhood to drop their leaves, and it is usually after the city trucks have come through to pick up the piles of leaves along the curb.

This year, the leaves didn’t even start to turn color until most of the trees in the neighborhood had already started to play taps for the season.

Then, all of a sudden, within two days, my leaves turned yellow and began to fall.  On Thanksgiving morning, we were greeted with an inch of slushy wet snow, so I headed outside to shovel my walks.

For every shovelful of wet snow, I also gathered a load of wet leaves. They had all decided to fall under the weight of the snow.

Now, I need to wait for them to dry out so I can rake them up and get rid of them.  How nice it was in the old days, back before people had lungs, and we could just put them in the streets and burn them and roast hot dogs and marshmallows and make a party of it.

But, times change. 

For twenty-five years, I didn’t have to worry about my leaves because we lived on top of a hill in the country and they just blew away into the surrounding fields, sometimes helped along a little bit by my tractor and mower.

I read recently that some cemeteries are now putting down artificial turf, which they find more economical than caring for real grass. Even leaf removal is easier, according to the article.  The gasoline powered leaf blowers have an easier time of blowing leaves off the plastic than they did off real grass.  It does all make me wonder, though, whether when they install the artificial turf if they precut the---well, never mind.

At the same time that football fields and cemeteries are moving away from grass, it seems that the roofs of buildings are being covered with plants.  The Ford Motor Company’s truck plant in Dearborn has a 10.4 acre roof covered with sedum, a plant that doesn’t need much water.  Supposedly, this roof lasts longer than a regular roof, provides insulation, and handles both rainwater and carbon dioxide absorption. 

Maybe they could play football up there.

But, I stray.  Back to leaves. Now that they are making alcohol fuel out of corn and trying to make it efficiently out of grass, I say, “Let’s make it out of leaves!” 

If there were a market for fallen leaves, I’d be out there picking them up and hauling them to the ethanol plant---heck, maybe they’d come and pick them up for me.

“Excuse me sir, but I couldn’t help notice that you have a lot of leaves.  I’m from the ethanol plant.  We’ll give you $10,000 for an exclusive contract to harvest your leaves for the next 5 years.”  Oh boy!

Or:  “Hello, 9-1-1?  I’d like to report a theft.  Someone stole my leaves.”

Up until now, about the only market for fallen leaves has been school kids who press them in books, and, let’s face it, until the population doubles a few more times, that isn’t going to make a dent on the leaf problem, and, if the population doubles a few more times, there won’t be any trees left anyway, so little kids will have to go to museums to see samples of pressed leaves from the early 21^st century.

 Besides, burning leaves in my gas tank so I can go to the store to by a hot dog and a marshmallow will be almost as good as the good old days.
 

                                         © by Jim Whitehouse

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