Like a bird on a wire

The leaves are almost down on the big maple tree across the street.  This time of year the noisy starlings flock there and cover the power lines in a row.

The jet stream is taking aim at the Northwest and the next few days will be windy and rainy. That should bring down all the pretty foliage around the neighborhood.  The furnace is running at night, it's snowing in the mountains and our Seattle winter is just around the corner.

I'm back to my old tried and true method of leaf mulching the flower beds.  I'm done with compost blower trucks forever.  Did I mention this on the blog?  Our load last year was filled with small pieces of plastic (and even some glass chips!) that gradually surfaced over the winter as it rained. 

I picked up bits of trash all summer as I weeded.  Understandably, this put me in a bad mood. The plants didn't care, but I did.  We pay the City to haul away our nasty kitchen garbage and then they sell it back as expensive garden product. Obviously they still have some quality control problems composting on such a huge urban scale.

Leaf mulch is much nicer anyway. It's free, organic (except for the odd candy wrapper) and the birds like pecking through it all winter for insects.  In the early spring when I pull it up, there's that wonderful sight of healthy, happy worms.

I managed to get quite a few cartloads of leaves over from across the street.  When people see me raking the curb over there, they say nice things because they assume I've "adopted a storm drain" as the City of Seattle tells us to do.  But I have my own selfish plans for those leaves.