First gardening rant

Here we go. I live in an area that was rural less than 20 years ago (pretty darn rural for suburbia even today). People do certain things without thinking in the country. One of them is burning leaves.

I'm not certain why on several acres of more or less "unimproved" land it would seem to be an imperative to rake up and then burn the leaves that have dropped like soil conditioner from the heavens unto one's property.

Apparently, it comes from some notion of cleanliness. So one needs to remove these things in order to be clean, what I like to call, "undirty". Yet the rusty truck parked on the lawn without air in the tires is not "dirty", it's simply in need of tires and a tranny and a new dif and a...

Oddly, my lazy man approach would seem to appeal to most county folk if you got right down to it. I get my fat arse onto my riding lawn mower (an old beater I got for all of $100 last year) and attach the bagging unit.

I ride until it fills (which is really fast). I then dump the contents into the garden as mulch (they're nicely shredded now so they're perfect). I will also put some in the vegetable garden (a very country thing to do) and till it under. What I can't manage goes into the compost heap.

Why do we burn them? Duno. Why do they vote against their own economic well being when they make less than $30k/year? Same reason. They didn't think about it.

So, I go 'round the neighborhood and vacuum all of the leaves I see and throw them into the garden. I smell the noxious fumes less often and my garden smiles.

So please, think before you burn those beauties, or send them to me.

Steve