Flump??? Flounce???

Three days of below 32 degrees and winds gusting to 50mph and the leaves flumped or flounced… Or said F-this, I’m outta here… anyhoo, they’re all now on the ground, in about 24 hours.

The spots of white down the center of the pic from the tree to the right side are six inch high rocks that outline a bed, just to give you an example of how DEEP the leaves are…

Oh yeah, the red arrow is a squirrel that was hunkered down in the leaves. Scared the crap outta me when it jumped up and hauled ass… Sigh…

Now waiting for it to warm up enough to get out there and rake them up (or hope to hell there is a nice strong wind in the next couple of days, then they will be somebody else’s problem).

Comments

Flump??? Flounce??? — 15 Comments

  1. I wonder what it would take to build a leaf blower that picked up the leaves, then discharged them into a tallish chimney.
    If you chose a windy day the leaves would then land someplace that isn’t your yard.
    Inquiring minds want to know.

    • D.R. makes a series of really nice yard vacs, from small to pull-behind-your-lawn-tractor-or-4×4. Always wanted one of those. And then, of course, discharge into enemy neighbor’s yard, or pile against the fence on the back 40.

  2. Hey Old NFO;

    You also could find a teenager to handle the raking…if I was closer, I would sub lease mine, LOL

    • Teenagers actually taking yard work? You’ve got one? Holy cow!! Talk about good parenting!! Around here they refuse offers of just about any reasonable amount. No yard work for them. Might scar their game console fingers, I suppose.

  3. Got home late yesterday afternoon and still had enough daylight to pick up the leaves and dump them out in the back ‘natural area’ (before I moved to NC I thought all space in the yard that had plants of some type were natural – little did I know!). Glad I did since it started raining overnight and is supposed to go on for all day today and tomorrow. And while I have squirrels in the yard (been tempted many times to get mom’s old Stevens .22 out and take em out with quiet CB caps) they generally take off at any sign of humans. The geese on the other hand wait until you start walking toward them, and even then they just kinda sashay away. Although a dog will hurry them along quite smartly!

  4. After a cold spell it has warmed up to something a bit more reasonable, and while we had increased winds, they weren’t enough to strip the leaves from the trees. I won’t bother raking them when they do. The south edge of my property are the city limits and I simply let the north wind do the job for me.

  5. Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes said it lest i think When leaves fall like that they PLOOMPH. That’s what I call it anyway.

  6. My neighbor’s fruitless mulberry did the same thing. One day full foliage and the next naked as a jaybird. Poor Texas trees live their lives by extremes. Oh and a leaf blower will substitute for a strong wind in a a pinch.

  7. All- Thanks for the comments… And no kids want the work…sigh… Guy, I’m almost afraid to ask what that was, and how he was supposed to walk with that contraption on…

    Posted from my iPhone.

  8. At Redquarters we mow them in with a mulching mower. Saves on the fertilizer bills. Or put them in the compost piles.

  9. We had a cold snap a few weeks ago, and POOF! *all* the leaves were on the ground in two days.

    We had them 8″ deep in a few spots. Kinda looked like leafy snowdrifts…..

  10. Up here in the North-Country of Crook County the leaves rest underneath 2″ of snow from earlier this week. Of the last 35+/- days 31 have been below normal, as global warming provides us all with cold comfort indeed. Daily walk are slip-slide affairs on ice turned snow. Normally, we are somewhere around 50º Fall clean-up postponed.

  11. TXRed- Yeah, that is an option, but it’s gotta warm up for me to get out there and do that.

    drjim- Wow!!!

    Frankns- Ouch… I’ll shut up now. 🙂