home grown mulch: an ode to trees.

Trees.
oh how tall you stand
with roots searching the deep
gathering up tasty nutrients
and depositing them in your
leaves.
oh leaves.

ha! im not much of a poet, but im feeling the love for leaves. its tragic that zillions of leaves get raked up, sacked up (in plastic so frequently) and tossed in the dump. tragic! these little sheets of nutrients are gold for plants and i finally utilized them just today. we have a big wonderful tree that leaves us gobs of leaves each fall. gobs. we have always raked them into a pile in a low spot of our yard, slowly filling the low spot, tossing shovels full in the compost and letting the rest get covered by grass (and mostly weeds). the result is a big area of layers and layers of "leaf mold" - partly decomposed leaves full of nutrients and the perfect mulch. so this afternoon with zoejo chilling on my back in our new ergo i mined the low spot for bucket after bucket full of leaf mold, read:mulch, and covered the herb/kitchen corner garden. it looks pretty. weeds will be kept down. good good nutrients will be delivered. moisture will be kept. this weekend ill do the larger vegetable patch.