Two weekends, three mornings, part of one afternoon, 500 bags of leaves.

[Denninmi]

Bear with me for being a bit weird here, but the best way I can explain my feelings about gathering hundreds and hundreds of bags of leaves is to quote the lyrics from a Black Eyed Peas song:

Boy I think about it every night, and day
I'm addicted, want to jump inside your love
I wouldn't want to have it any other way
I'm addicted, and I just can't get enough

Except, its not love, it's leaves. I can't get enough. Mulching down EVERYTHING I can possibly mulch.

It saves a TON of work later. And it makes a big difference during drought.

And, of course, it's free (well, except for the gas) compost and fertilizer.

There is even the random bonus of free plants buried in there -- in this round, I got a sedum, 5 golden barberries, a bunch of mystery daylilies.

And, of course, I'm not going to run out of lawn and leaf bags for this spring and summers pruning any time soon!

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I love it. I use all my leaves for mulch too.

But seriously....where are you getting 500 bags of leaves????

[Denninmi]

2. It's easy in my neighborhood.

I didn't go further than about a mile in any direction from my house. This is suburbia, most people have large, mature trees, and in fact, many of the developments in the 1980s and early 1990s were carved into the woodlands, leaving as much as possible on the building lots.

And, we have municipal-sponsored, partially subsidized garbage, recycling, and yard waste cleanup here. So, pretty much everyone does it.

As a result, it's not at all difficult to come up with 500 bags of leaves. One house on a heavily tree'd lot had about 70 bags of oak leaves at the curb. Many have 10 to 20 at the curb.

The only thing I regret is I don't have more time and a larger vehicle. I can generally get between 12 and 14/15 bags in per trip. So, it was a lot of trips. Round trip time probably averages 10-12 minutes, so I can usually gather about 50 to 60 bags in an hour. My fantasy would be to have some kind of big truck where I could get 40-50 bags per trip. But otherwise, no, I like my small Chevy.

I haven't had to compete with the trash pickup for them yet this year -- people got out and did a lot of cleaning with the nice March weather, and our pickup doesn't start until this Thursday here.

[JDPriestly]

3. I envy you.

I leave the avocado leaves down for the avocado trees. They like that. My other trees produce leaves, but I don't rake them because the trees need the mulch. I would love more brown -- more dried leaves for my compost bin.

I'm not gardening on your scale. I really envy you though I probably would not have the physical strength to do what you do.