The Lawn Is On FireFollow

Spent the afternoon yesterday sending the year's maple leaf crop up into a cloud of smoke. I burned a pile the size of a small car yesterday and probably still have two afternoons worth of stuff yet to burn. Oh, and I have a 5' circle of scorched earth in the drainage swale in the lawn now but that'll grow back in the spring.

I would if I could, but I live in a liberal democrat **** state where its illegal.

So I have a backyard "fire place" in which the fuel just happens to be as many leaves as I can get away with before the neighbor calls the cops.

My leaves all just blow into the school yard across the street.

In the burb I live in (Villa Park), they'll take your bags of leaves for free from Oct 22 through Dec 7.

(But I just mulch my leaves up with the lawnmower because I'm a lazy *******.)

That's some old-timey autumn entertainment right there. All you need is nice leaf burning and some mugs of hot apple cider with fresh whipped cream and ground nutmeg, and you'll be beating away the ghost of Normal Rockwell with a stick.

I have very few leaf-dropping trees in my yards. The ones that do drop, just get mulched and bagged with the final lawn mowing of the season. Then the leaves get dumped in the grass clipping pile along with everything else I manage to pick up with the mower.

My neighbor, however, sets up an intricrate series of "leaf rows". As they are burned they leave behind patterns of criss-cross scorch marks in his yard. There is really no rhyme or reason to it, but it looks kinda neat when the season is done with.

As far as pre-winter time burnings, I have a set of old cabinets I ripped out of the pole barn. Quite a few large boxes, and two couches that need to be thrown in the fire pit. That will probably happen this weekend, after dark of course.

Edited, Nov 19th 2007 11:16am by Frakkor

I've always found the burning of leaves very invigorating. The paganistic atmosphere that surrounds the activity seems to spark long hidden barbaric instincts in me.

Also, it's a good time to get rid of incriminating financial records.

We can't do that where I live. Apparently, it's against the municipal code. My dad did it once and the firefighers came and lectured him.

My county has some ridiculous laws regarding appropriate burning times. Apparently it seems logical to expect someone between January 15th and March 1st to want to go outside and burn leaves.

Because that's just what I want to do in the dead of winter, try to rake through 6 inches of standing snow to attempt to ignite a wet, steaming pile of leaves that resembles some prehistoric pile of shit on fire. Yippee...

Take your dried out old Christmas tree out onto the lawn and throw matches at it.

heady Autumn scent, and no mistake.

Until the cUnt next door thinks "Ooh I might as well burn all the junk out of my garage while I'm at it", plastics and all

Anywho - I mulch mine for compost

I miss the scent of burning leaves, since it's been a no no around here for decades now. Think the last time I saw anyone burning leaves, I was visiting my grandparents in Sandwich Ill, over 25 years ago.

We don't have many trees that blow leaves into our postage stamp size front yarn. Seems that most people here have learn not to plant trees near their water lines. After finding out how corroded our water main was last winter, I be surprise if anyone has original pipes still connected to the city water line.

Jonwin just lets the the back yard go natural years ago, so it's no sense in trying to rake among the vines and smalls weed trees. Of what little grass and leaves we do rake up, will either composed in a corner of the yard, or be taken down into the woods at the end of the street.

Well, grass won't grow if you leave it covered with leaves, but that just makes for less mowing in the summer.

Besides, 'shaggy' natural-native lawns are all the rage these days.