With holiday guests visiting soon, a part of the day was spent clearing leaves from the front walk and the patio seen from the sunroom. Again this year, leaves of ‘Bloodgood’ and ‘Seriyu’ Japanese maples fell just in time for the holiday to blanket the front walk, and while Barbara and I rarely use this path it’s likely our guests will. Now, only the planted area beneath the ‘Bloodgood’ is covered by a delightful mulch of red leaves (quickly turning brown, below).

The stone paths that wind through the garden will remain leaf covered for a while. How long? Who cares? I’m happy to slosh through deep piles until spring. The only thing I care about for the next month or two is clearing the crowns of hellebores (below) so their flowering is not delayed. I’ll get around to this soon.

Possibly, I’ll make time for clearing leaves from the two small rock gardens. The leaves must be removed before they’re wet and matted, which could rot the crowns of some of the plants that must have superb drainage. If leaves were left and allowed to decay in place the drainage of the gravel and sand soil would be upset, but that’s hardly a care in the coming weeks.

The bulk of the leaf cleanup will be done in early spring, but the most time-consuming chore will be to empty and clean the five ponds. The how-to guides recommend not constructing ponds beneath trees, but here I’ve disregarded that advice, and besides, there are trees everywhere, either the forest or the many dozens I’ve planted. This is a sloppy task, but it takes a day, and then it’s over until next year.

The bulk of the fallen leaves will be left in place to decay. These are my mulch, and I suppose the deep piles slow the growth of daffodils and other winter and spring flowering bulbs, but it doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference. I have no doubt there are various overwintering beasts beneath the piles of leaves, and of course this is another reason not to rake and remove them. Still, I wasn’t going to bother anyway.