Living, and Letting

I HAVE SEVERAL ornamental maple trees in my nearly half acre yard, and have learned that every ornamental maple has its own timetable for displaying fall colors and losing leaves. Mine seem to prefer turning from green to bright red, yellow, and orange over a period of about twenty four hours in late October or early November, displaying their autumnal beauty for about another twenty four hours, then, dropping all of their leaves in yet another event lasting about one day, decorating the ground with a lovely carpet several inches thick and then standing leaveless all winer long, during which, a friend once pointed out to me, deciduous tress have their own special kind of stark, barren, tree branch brown beauty. My entire yard becomes seriously buried in teh carpet of leaves, becasue I have about sixty trees, all deciduous. Many of them are mere sapling volunteers and will never get big due to their being closely clustered together. About twenty of them, however,Iplanted twenty years ago when I built my house, and they are now big, beautiful, and dropping leaves like crazy. I knew from the beginning that this would be my fate, to have a lawn inumdated with leaves in late fall, but I accept it as the price I pay for trying to save the planet, one yard at a time. I wear my leaf strewn lawn like a badge of honor, sort of. My strategy is to fill my big trach can with leaveseach week throughout the winter, to cut down a bit on their enormous volume. I'd have a bonfire, but am afiaid I'd burn down my trees, and, more horrible still, my house. Most of the leaves, and their are more leaves every year as the trees get bigger and produce more and more leaves, I simply allow to remain on the ground throughout the winter. I am told that this is good for not only my yard, but for the Earth's environment in general, becasue the carpet of leaves provide habitat for all kinds of small animals, including snails and worms, animals which contribute to ecological health and balance. Sometime in late February or early March, when the weeds begin to grow and the yard begins to look like it could use its first mowing of the spring, I mow it,leaves and all. The entire yard, bathed gently in early spring mulch. I know people who have no trees in their yard, have planted none, for the expressed reason that they have no interest in dealing with leaves. You wonder whether they will pave their whole yard with concrete to avoid mowing the grass and pulling weeds. That approach, on a large scale, wont work. Insect exterminators sometimes knock on my door, offering to rid my property of all living creatures, inside and out. I politely decline the offer. Even taking into consideration the fact that I was nearly eaten alive by mosquitoes, I would rather work out my relationships one on one with the wide variety of animals which inhabitmy yard,including ground hogs, gophers, boles, moles, and snakes, than use chemical warfare to turn my property into a lifeless, desolate, wasteland of perfect grass and nothing else, which looks like a putting surface. I have evolved spiritually beyond the need to kill or pull weeds. I just let 'em live, and mow them with the rest of the yard. I leave two or three little islands of unmowed wilderness, as insect and especially butterfly sanctuaries. I am realizing what humanity needs to realize,and is perhaps beginning to; that we humans neither own this planet, nor live on it alone, nor does the world exist merely for our convenience and pleasure. As long as we all remember that, we should be just fine.