Sunday Silence

Once again I'm going old-school, attacking the autumn leaves with broom for my compost pile and the locust pods with rake for the town to take away.

Locust pods, a constant part of the autumn landscape.
(Margo D. Beller)

"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection," according to Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau knew that wood ensured surviving a cold winter. However, eventually the woodpile would have to be replenished. It is an annual ritual, as expected as the seasons themselves.

I do not look at the locust pods I must rake every year with anything resembling affection.

It is that time again. I am outside in the early morning cool on a Sunday, enjoying some rare quiet, where the only things I hear are the scraping of my rake, the screams of the jay and the tapping of leaves and pods falling to the street in the breeze. It is rare because at this time of year the air is usually filled with the roar of leaf blowers and the stench of the gasoline that fuels them. But not at this hour on a Sunday. At least, not yet.

As sure as the sun rises in the east, during the weekdays the lawn services have been blowing every last leaf off my neighbors' properties. Those who don't use a service do the same on evenings and weekends. Also like clockwork, the articles have come out either directly blasting the use of blowers or making fun of them. But that makes no difference to those in suburbia who equate success with a neatly cropped, leafless lawn.

White-throated sparrows have come south to New Jersey.
(Margo D. Beller)

(Two anti-blower articles, as it happens, were sent to me by my brother-in-law, the teaching naturalist. He lets the wind takes care of what leaves fall on his rural NH property. His son, by contrast, uses a gas-powered, backpack-enabled blower on his property. He must wear ear coverings.)

I have a blower, an old, electric-powered model. I find that unless I am blowing leaves into a rough pile for my husband (MH) and me to rake into tarps, it is useless on the heavier pods. So I have been using a broom on the leaves matting the patio and a rake on the pods littering the driveway and the lawn. MH plans to do one last mowing soon to cut the grass he recently fed and mulch the leaves, and I want the pods out of the grass.

As in past years, I silently curse the person who, 40-plus years ago, thought locust trees would be a fine street tree. The locust leaves are very small but their stems fall and clump when raked. The dark brown pod contains the seeds the birds and squirrels and possibly deer eat and then spread through their poop or their digging. 

I recently finished reading a very interesting book on seeds and the lengths plants go to protect the seeds until they are ready to be expelled into the world and create more plants. During the summer the female locust put out greenish pods, some of which dried out and fell to the ground. But the pods didn't start falling in large numbers until they had developed the familiar tough brown casing to protect the seeds. Now, opening one of the pods, my hand was filled with small brown seeds. If I threw them on the lawn I might have a forest before too long.

Part of the fairy ring. (Margo D. Beller)

As I work I see all the ground ivy taking up space, happily fed along with MH's grass. In one area, a strange circle of mushrooms has sprung up, a "fairy ring." I'm not bothering to pick them because they are likely poisonous. The mower will do the work for me. 

There is always some good in doing this raking. It is another thing I do to prepare for the winter when I won't be working in the garden (except for possibly shoveling snow). When I stopped to straighten my back I could enjoy the increasing color of the leaves in my trees - red maple, brownish-yellow oak, yellow elm. The dogwood tree's red leaves haven't fallen but the fruit is long gone, and with it the catbirds. Now I hear the "old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of the white-throated sparrow, which finds my part of New Jersey just fine for winter roosting. I am hearing woodpeckers, including a pileated flying over the trees beyond my neighbor's house across the street. The air is cool, the exercise healthy. I've needed exercise after a summer spent mainly indoors due to heat, humidity and illness.

Now I am making up for lost time.  

Black vulture, a southern bird becoming more common
in the north. (RE Berg-Andersson)

At one point something casts a shadow and I look up to see nine or so black vultures circling, Black vulture is a southern species but, like the red-headed woodpecker, it is slowly extending its range northward as the U.S. continues to warm. These birds might be heading south, but maybe not. I also hear Canada geese honking from the nearby community garden. Canada geese migrate but some found suburban yards, parks and office lawns so pleasant they have stayed, bred and become as much of a pest as the deer.

I hear other birds, including a mockingbird making its rasping "this is mine!" call, no doubt guarding a fruiting tree or bush. Smaller birds are flying between the trees looking for insects to pry out of the bark, including the gold-crowned kinglet, another winter bird that typically doesn't hang around my yard. (It prefers pine forests.)

For now, I'm done. Have I removed every pod? No, but most of them. Did I get every leaf off the patio? Not by a long shot. There are plenty more in the trees to come down. They always come down, as sure as day follows night and autumn follows summer.

And, as expected, now I hear a distant leaf blower. By the time I get to the top of my driveway to put the rake in the garage, a second, louder, blower is going nearby. 

So much for Sunday silence.