by Hgomez

Created on: November 02, 2009   Last Updated: November 04, 2009

Raking leaves can be an exercise in futility. How many times have you spent hours cleaning your lawn of leaves, only to find the trees throwing their "trash" all over your lawn again. You rake and rake and rake, and then another layer of leaf carpeting covers your grass. Depending on the amount of trees in your yard, or in neighboring yards, this process can last for weeks. Some find it easier to wage war against these droppings frequently, while others take the approach to wait until the very last leaf has fallen, and then begin the clean up. Either way, too much time and money is being spent attending to the gathering, bagging, and disposing of the leaves.

One of the first rules of fall, especially when you are bombarded with leaves, is to cut your grass extremely short. If your grass is able to take it, lower your lawn mower on its bottom most setting and cut your grass. The purpose of this, you ask? If your lawn is short enough, leaves won't get stuck in your grass. The leaves sit on top of the grass, and don't get under the blades. This frees them to blow, across the street, to a neighbor's yard, wherever. Having a short lawn serves a dual purpose. While letting Mother Nature be your leaf blower is nice, it also keeps the leaves from getting pushed down too far, which makes these leaves impossible to rake.

Another trick to raking leaves is to save your bags of already raked leaves. It didn't take long for my neighbors to catch on to the first trick of keeping your grass short enough so the leaves will blow elsewhere. All of my neighbors scalp their lawns at the first sign of a change in color of the leaves. Line the boundaries of your yard with these bags, so others blowing leaves won't take up residence on your property. The ones that do inhabit your lawn are confined to a very limited area, usually cleaned with two or three swipes with the mower.

You can beat your head against the trees all autumn long, or you can invite Mother Nature to help you along. As you watch your neighbors breaking their backs and busting blisters on their hands, you can enjoy a beer and some college football. It may not make you a favorite among your neighbors, but they have all winter long to get over it.

Learn more about this author, Hgomez.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.