Yes. It’s still happening. Leaves are falling in a never ending stream, smothering the lawn, making paths slippy, and breaking down beautifully to turn the gravel driveway into an ideal seedbed for weeds and sycamore saplings. With two copses at the east and west extremities of the garden we probably have more leaves than most to contend with. Combine that with three horse chestnuts, a corner devoted to ornamental cherries, a large field maple and several mature birches we have a generous supply of material to fill our three leaf bins.
Clearing leaves can’t take over our days completely though and with the rest of the garden needing attention we have to get the job done so that we can move on to other pressing matters. The leeks we wrote about last week decimated by the leaf miner have been removed from the bed and brassica leaves that were littering the paths have been consigned to the compost heap.
In the leek bed were two golden leaved elder trees (Sambucus nigra ‘Aurea’) that we’d temporarily heeled-in some months previously. These were lifted and transplanted, one in the flower garden and the other in a space within the woodland.
Lastly, as the sun dipped behind the nearby woodland and the air cooled we emptied the greenhouse of the last remaining tomato plants - shrivelled fruit and dried up stems were consigned to the compost heap along with the roots and compost that had sustained them throughout the long hot summer. Ah, the long hot summer. Remember that?