The autumn leaves are beautiful while they are on the trees, but all it takes is a rainy, windy day and most of them come down and cover the lawn and walkways and pile up in drits beside the house.
I hire a lawn care service to come in and use leaf blowers to blow them off into the woods where they can decay over the winter. People who live in town can blow them into the street where the city comes by with large trucks with vacuum devices that suck them up and they get hauled away to be composted. Some cities require that all the leaves be bagged in biodegradable Leaf Bags and city workers load them all manually onto trucks.
While doing the fall clean up we noticed this giant bull thistle (cirsium vulgar) that was flourishing in the backyard.
As a kid playing barefoot in the yard, it was necessary to keep an eye out for any thistles that popped up and began growing in the grass. Bull thistles produce a pink/purple flower and has thousands of seeds that are spread by the wind. I'm glad we noticed this one before it went to seed!
Look at those spikes! It took some digging and a heavy pair of leather gloves to remove it.
I am quite happy that I don't live in a place where the leaves must be bagged! What a time consuming job that is!
