My house has no trees on the property... However, it doesn't look like one of those horrible new places where there are no trees... Just past my property lines on both sides are oak trees that are a minimum of 60 years old... They reach out and shape my place almost completely, and it makes for a gorgeous effect in the spring and summer...
Then there's the fall... Oak trees drop acorns, not to mention leaves... You can imagine how many acorns huge old trees like these drop... If you're not around oaks much, you probably don't know that everything seemed to come together for the oaks this year, and they have produced record amounts of acorns... I'm not even going to mention the hammering my roof and skylight took as they kept falling for over a month...
My house is set pretty close to the road... I also have a driveway on one side of the property... That leaves probably 40 feet wide, and 11 or 12 feet deep between the house and the street.... Subtract a sidewalk from that, and you have a couple strips around 4' x 40'... That's not exactly a large front yard... So how many acorns do you suppose I could rake out of that 320 square feet today?...
10 pounds?... Please...
25 pounds?... Not even close...
50 pounds?... Keep going...
75 pounds?... Nope...
100 pounds?... Yea... 100 pounds of bloody acorns... You having a hard time visualizing that?... OK... It filled around 1.25 45-gallon garbage pails...
Yea... tomorrow I'm going to try to do the back yard, which doesn't get as many, and the driveway which is covered for 65 feet... Friday will be gutters, which I am sure are full of the damn things too...
I can see I am going to hate those wonderful trees every fall...
Posted by Backstage at November 2, 2005 11:01 PM | TrackBackThe bad news is that the oak leaves don't drop at the same time as the acorns, and they don't drop when the rest of the tress drop theirs. You will be busy long after your neighbors are done with the maples and sycamores.
Posted by: Suzette at November 3, 2005 08:01 AMYea, I know... The Oaks love to hang on to half their leaves and drop them sporaticlly over the winter and in to spring...
Posted by: Tim at November 3, 2005 08:44 AM