Once again, I've been thinking about our water situation (or lack thereof) and realized the brick border along the three mile strip of hedges and parkway is not enough. Yes, the border keeps the water where it's supposed to be, but there is one more thing that would help. Looking around the property, I realized the leaves from the native oaks would serve admirably. One tiny problem though, they are too hard and large to allow water to pass through easily. So here's where it gets crazy: I pour some leaves into a big tub and then hand scrunch them up into tiny bits. Those bits go into rain water to soak. Rinse, lather, repeat. Once I have a large tubful, the saturated leaves go under the hedges in a thick layer. One tub does approximately 3 feet. I can do 2 tubs a session (which basically means in a day). And my poor hands look like claws at the end of the day.
Now before all you fixers out there go "but you shoulda/coulda done...," please allow me to answer your suggestions.
1. Just get chips from a landscaper. We even have free chip drops of tree wood chips in our town. But they are too twiggy and woody for the area I need them for, and the chip drops are HUGE loads. Too much to deal with.
2. Take the leaves, dump them somewhere and run over them repeatedly with your car. That actually IS a terrific way to crush the leaves but nope. No place to safely do that and it actually adds too many steps to get the same result (or close enough).
3. Use a hedge trimmer to break them up. Good idea IF I had a hedge trimmer and a container to withstand the torture. Or if I knew how to actually use a hedge trimmer. Or liked them (hint -- don't like them).
4. Just dump the leaves whole and call it a day. As noted, they are too thick and large for the job. Also, I've discovered that whole leaves don't pack as well to give the depth required to do a good job of retaining moisture and keeping weeds at bay. They leave bare spots in no time, as evidenced here:
So -- from bare dirt to deep crushed leaf mulch:
