To rake or not to rake, that is the question.

No teaching today, just a little soggy gardening.  As the salmon run at Carkeek begins to wane, so to do fall fieldtrips to Pipers Creek.  More signs of fall moving into winter: the many shades of grey, the many kinds of rain, and that bite in the air that makes some reach for books, blankets and warm beverages, and sends others into daydreams of a good snow season in the mountains. 

On a related topic, I decided today that Seattlites should borrow a page from our Inuit neighbors to the north who, according to urban legend, use up to 100 different words to describe "snow".  Why not do the same for the many variations of rain we experience here in Seattle?  For example, today started out as a "Seattle steam bath" and switched over to a "light mist" mid-morning before tapering off by lunch-time.  That's about a 2 on the Soggy Gardener scale.  When they figure out how to waterproof iphones, I foresee another great and useless app hitting the market.  Simply stick your iphone outside screen-up for 1 min. to allow the number of raindrops to register, and presto, instant weather report and outfit recommendation.  A high-tech version of the "weather rock" if you will.

So I gardened with Rick and his 15 years-old daughter Anna today.  Anna is in town for Thanksgiving, and unlike many kids her age in her situation, she sees going to work with dad as a double bonus: A) I get to hang out with dad all day in the light mist, and B) I get to make a little money of my own so I can go buy that new Greenday album - yes, shockingly, kids these days are still listening to Greenday.  Not only has music changed very little since I was Anna's age, but I must say, it was reassuring to find out that 15 year-olds still know everything.  In this current climate where a general feeling of uncertainty hangs in the air like a fog over the Bay,  it was refreshing to spend time with someone who has all the answers.  Rick is a good dad and Anna is a good kid, and I'm happy to know them both.

But onto the topic at hand...to rake or not to rake.  I can't help but ask myself that every time I make a pile of leaves.  The ecologist inside of me feels snubbed.  Aren't those leaves simply adding needed nutrients back into the soil, while creating habitat for micros/macros and mycelia to do their thing?  The organic farmer inside of me feels a little confused.  Isn't that mat of organic material serving as a pretty good mulch, keeping down weeds, soaking up moisture, and offering protection from frost?  But in the end, the horticulturalist/landscape gardener wins out...cleanliness is next to godliness, and the less decaying material near your plants the fewer potential diseases your plants will come in contact with.

The best course of action is probably to do what my good friend/client, Hellmut does (or has me do).  At Hellmut's, we gather as many leaves as we can from his property (mostly big leaf maples), distribute them over his lawn, chop them up and collect them with his bag mower, and then dump them into his compost bins.  Because Hellmut has a lot of acid loving evergreens such as Rhododendrons, we incorporate used coffee grounds into the leaf/grass mixture.  In a few short months, when the sun returns and the plants start to really feed again, we will have superb compost ready for them.  It's a beautiful and practically closed system that has been feeding Hellmut and his cadre of Mt. Beavers, moles and voles for 30+ years. 

When I think about Hellmut's system and compare it to what has become the conventional one, I get a little bummed out.  In the conventional system, we show up in our big fuel inefficient truck, attempt to sterilize the garden beds by removing anything that might attract a decomposer, load up said truck (making it even less fuel efficient), haul it off to the transfer station where it get's picked up by an even bigger, less fuel efficient truck, and hauled even farther away to a dump where bull-dozers, conveyor belts and huge sheets of plastic will be used to produce compost that will then be put into plastic bags and trucked to a garden center (kind of) near you.  You can then get in your vehicle, go pick some up for $5-10/cu. ft. and bring it back to spread on your nutrient deprived garden.  Just don't forget to wear gloves, because lord knows how many cigarette butts, staples, bits of glass, etc. got thrown into that yard waste bin. 

Perhaps in the post-petroleum world that Anna and her friends will inherit, they, learning from their father's and mother's mistakes will come up with more sane ways of doing things.  Perhaps they will borrow the wisdom of Hellmut and his generation and take to heart the words of "waste not want not".  Perhaps every new house will be built with a bio-digester that will transform not only fallen leaves, but dog poop, food scraps and trash as well into methane that will run the heat and electric.   I guess every generation sees a better future for the one it helps to raise, and so as I prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving this year I would like to thank, not chastise, the Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers out there in the blogosphere for doing their best and showing us both the right ways and wrong ways of doing things.

[one correction to be made from my last post:  I was at Greenlake again yesterday, this time with Mo, and the deciduous conifers down there at the North end are not dawn redwoods, but really really big bald cypress.]