I was visiting a friend in S Mpls recently and one of the neighbors was
adding insult to injury. He was not only placing his leaves in the street,
but he was doing it with one of those obnoxiously noisy blowing machines -
and this went on for at least 40 minutes.
I have a dirty little secret to confess. Lawn connoisseurs will cringe at
this, but - I don't do leaves. I take that back - I do rake 'once' each
year - in the spring, as soon as the ground is dry enough for it. It sure
seems like a goodly portion of the leaf mass just sort of 'melts' into the
soil over the winter. But then again, I don't have the best turf grass lawn
on the block either.
My neighbor immigrated from Estonia after W.W.II, and still talks with a
slight accent. I love her dearly, and we get along fine, but she is anal
retentive about leaf raking. This 70 year old woman is out in her yard
raking leaves almost every day in the late fall. But then, she also sweeps
her sidewalk every week throughout the summer. One day a couple of autumns
ago she mentioned something about my leaf littered yard. I told her of my
'once in the spring' program,and her reply was, "Oh sure, so then they blow
over to my yard".
By the way, on the Moby Dicks subject - I went out kayaking on Bassett Creek
and Wirth Lake last Saturday (for the last time this year I am sure) after
reading some posts about the old Moby Dicks. As usual, I was picking up
pieces of trash as I paddled along. Seemed like an odd coincidence when I
picked up an old ball point pen from Moby Dicks.
Dave Stack
Harrison
PS -- In case anyone is interested in the General Mills lawsuit against the
DNR over aquifer water, I have set up a website about the topic at:
http://www.mninter.net/~stack/aquifer
> From: Bruce Gaarder >
>> I don't know whether Minneapolis has an ordinance against putting leaves
and grass clippings in the street, but Saint Paul does. I don't know
whether it is enforced. I do see lots of people putting leaves in the
street, especially commercial lawn services... >>
