End of Season One

Composter and Leaves
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Harvesting Leaves

With three maples, two tall birches, two oaks, and additional maples, birches and oak trees on the fence line, not to mention shrubs such as serviceberry and elderberry, our property gets plenty of leaves in the fall. The question is, what to do with them?

The City of Mississauga has an excellent leaf pickup program -- you rake your leaves to the roadside, and the city collects them and transports them to its large composting sites. In the past we were happy to give them away. This season, however, we wanted to recycle as many of them as possible on our own property.

Oak leaves are known to be difficult to compost because they degrade very slowly, but, fortunately, they're the last leaves to fall. When the maple and birch leaves had finished falling, I raked them onto my side yard and spread them to a depth of about one foot high, then ran my mulcher-mower over them, back and forth, until they were chopped into a finer, denser mass. After they were chopped, I harvested the mix, though I had to wait several days due to heavy rain.




Harvesting the Leaf Mulch
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I cleared the fallen leaves from the corner of our back yard, and added the leaf mulch to decompose and compost over winter.




Mulch Pile
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Next spring we'll turn the compost pile early and by later spring we'll spread the mix over the plant beds in the back garden, returning the leaf matter into the soil.

End of Season Images

As autumn lengthens and winter approaches, a tour around the yard reveals some seasonal images. Hydrangea petals have turned into the papery, delicate browns that make them a special treat. We harvested one batch of hydrangea for our kitchen vase. The rest will stay on the plant as winter accent.




Hydrangea Petals
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The pods from the rose of sharon are, in their own way, as beautiful as the plant in full bloom.





Rose of Sharon Pods
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The highbush cranberry plant is in full berry.




Highbush Cranberries
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An oak leaf bids farewell to the season.




Lonely Oak Leaf
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Even Marion's bicycle senses that it's time to head into winter storage.





Bicycle, Leaves, First Snow
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Precursors of Winter

The first sign of snow, in November, provided a background for the oakleaf hydrangea.




Oakleaf Hydrangea and First Snow
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And Old Owl, a rough cedar totem, keeps vigil in the native-plant bed at the front.




Old Owl
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And another stray oak leaf sits on new-fallen snow.




Oak Leaf on Snow
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Everything is now ready for its winter sleep.