For the love of leaves

When their work for trees is done, colorful foliage falls into our lives

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Leaves Illustration
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Leaves Illustration

What to do about leaves?

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Pretty as they are, leaves like these pose a seasonal question: Who’s going to rake ’em up?

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

A garden rake (left) is as much a standard home tool as a shovel. But while this kind of rake will do for leaf-gathering, other kinds of rakes are lighter and better-suited to the job.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

A leaf rake has many tines in a fan shape, designed to sweep up as many leaves as possible.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

A leaf blower sends yard debris fl ying in a whoosh. Leaf blowers come in a choice of gas-powered, electric and even cordless electric models, from about $50 into hundreds of dollars.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

Arkansas’ leaf-decorated highways make a splash of fall foliage touring from now into November.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

A jack-o’-lantern suspends among fall leaves in this scene from the Conway Symphony Orchestra and University of Central Arkansas shadow-puppet production of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree.

The question blows in the wind every autumn. And the answers fly all over:

• Leaves need to be raked and blown -- and mulched and bagged for yard debris pickup, and mown over, scattered and made to go away, all in order to maintain healthy grass.

"Leaf removal is the key to turf maintenance," according to a bulletin on tall fescue grass from the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service. "Remove fallen leaves promptly in order to decrease shade on turf."

• But leaves are pretty. Tourist states including Arkansas advertise brilliant splashes of leaves to entice money-spending vacationers.

"Embark on fall foliage tours in The Natural State," bids the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.

• And bookstores and public and school libraries hold dozens of young-reader books that look at leaves the way children do: as magic.

We're Going on a Leaf Hunt (Cartwheel), by Steve Metzger, pictures three children on a search for different kinds and colors of fall leaves -- none better than a red maple leaf.

"We went on a leaf hunt," they cheer at the end. "What a wonderful day!"

Leaves come down to a gutter-clogging heap of contradictions. But if leaves make people happy, then anyone in search of a wonderful day has come to the right place in Arkansas.

TRUNK SHOW

Healthy, leaf-producing trees add 10 percent and more to property values, according to the Arbor Day Foundation in Lincoln, Neb. The foundation advocates tree-planting through the celebration of national Arbor Day, April 29.

Also, leafy shade trees can lower a home's air-conditioning costs by 30 percent, as cited on the foundation's website, arborday.org. A mature tree in the yard can be worth hundreds to thousands of dollars.

For central Arkansas, the Arbor Day Foundation recommends planting apple, crab-apple, dogwood, sweet-gum, oak, elm and black walnut trees -- plentiful leaf droppers.

Hot Springs artist Linda Williams Palmer wouldn't have it any other way. Palmer specializes in colored pencil portraits of the state's champion (biggest) trees, including a brown-leaf sugar maple and yellow-adorned tulip tree.

"I am a leaf watcher," she says. As a homeowner, "I always thought the colorful leaves on a lawn were beautiful, and although I mulched them eventually, I hated to."

"I live in my apartment on the third floor above my studio now, so I have no leaves to rake," she adds. Still, "I have a wonderful view of the changing colors on the Hot Springs National Park mountains on either side of me, so I can still enjoy the fall colors."

Palmer's work is collected in The Champion Trees of Arkansas: An Artist's Journey from the University of Arkansas Press. She will read from the book and sign copies at 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Nov. 17 at leafy Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs. More information is available at garvangardens.org.

LOWER THE BROOM

The basic tool of leaf removal is so old that the word "rake" goes back to Old English and even Norse origins that mean "scrape" and "heap up." A rake is a broom for outdoors.

The basic rake, technically a bow rake, is the one that looks like a metal comb on the end of a long handle. Also called a garden rake, it's a fixture of pretty much any garden shed or garage. Why look for anything else?

But this kind of rake does best at smoothing dirt. The tines are too far apart for a smart job of leaf-raking. Leaves slip through, and the frisky escapees have to be chased time and again, like trying to catch dust bunnies with a salad fork. Meanwhile, the heavy rake sets a twinge in the arm, an ache in the back.

Three other, lighter kinds of rakes are designed mainly for leaves, and most go for under $20 at the hardware store:

• A leaf rake looks like a wide fan of close-together tines made of plastic, bamboo or light metal. The biggest will clear a 2-foot and wider swath.

• But a big rake is clumsy around shrubs, where leaves nestle under the branches. This job calls for a deft little shrub rake, like a half-size leaf rake.

• Smaller still, a hand rake is about the size of a garden trowel, useful for clearing leaves carefully out of garden and flower beds without damaging the plants.

A RAKE'S PROGRESS

The word, "rake," also means a lazy rascal -- like someone who knows how to make raking as easy as possible.

Rake downhill, for example. Even so, wear gloves to protect against hand blisters, and a dust mask to prevent wheezes.

These are pointy-leafed pointers from the gardening magazine and website, Rodale's Organic Life at rodalesorganiclife.com.

Rake with the wind is another tip. In fact, the wind is such a helpful partner when it comes to wrangling leaves, it led to the invention of that hand-held hurricane, the leaf blower.

"Leaf blowers are extremely efficient for cleaning leaves, grass clippings, and debris from driveways [and] sidewalks," according to outdoor tool-maker STIHL Inc. at stihlusa.com. "In these situations, a leaf blower is more time- and cost-efficient than a rake or a broom."

Leaf blowers cost from $50 to $500 in a variety of gasoline-powered, electric and cordless electric models, from light little porch puffers to jet engine-sounding haymakers able to whoosh a parking lot.

"It's tough to know which choice is right for you," even Consumer Reports advises. But in general: The more ground to cover, the more leaves, the bigger a blower it takes to do the job.

HOW TO CLEAN UP

Build a better rake and the world will clear a path to your door. Rakes haven't changed much over the years, but some offer the latest tweaks on one of the world's oldest ideas:

• Leaf Scoops, Claws and Giant Hands (around $10-$20) are various brand names for these handy ways to pick up a triple-heaping handful of nature's lawn litter. They work like wearing an oversize catcher's mitt on each hand, only made of plastic with zigzag edges for gripping.

• Amazing Rake ($30) attaches the garden claws to a long handle. It works like a squeeze mop to scoop up a steam shovel-like load of leaves.

• Leaf bags are generally larger than 30-gallon garbage bags. Made of paper or plastic, leaf bags are available in 39- and 45-gallon sizes -- and even larger: 60-gallon bags that double as outdoor Halloween decorations. Stuffed, they look like giant, grinning orange jack-o'-lanterns.

TURN A NEW LEAF

Leaves might seem to be in the business of selling rakes. But science insists they have other reasons to change color, speckle the air like confetti and scatter the ground like the remains of a rambunctious birthday party.

Basically, each green leaf is a solar-powered food factory for the tree. Sunlight gives a leaf the energy to make sugar out of water and carbon dioxide -- a process called photosynthesis.

A green leaf is green thanks to a leprechaun-colored pigment, chlorophyll. But autumn's shorter days and nippier nights cause the chlorophyll to break down. When it does, surprise!

The once-dominant green dims away to reveal the many splendid colors of fall -- reds, golds, yellows and oranges -- that were inside the leaf all along, hidden under the chlorophyll.

About this same time, the leaf starts to lose hold at a cutoff point, called the abscission zone, between the stalk and the stem. For a leaf, the change means crossing over into the twilight zone. The leaf is dried up and done. The merest breeze is enough to pluck it loose, and away it goes.

All this happens as part of the tree's life cycle, a complicated biology. Poets make a big deal of it, too -- a metaphor of life and passing on, deep and brooding.

"Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away," Emily Bronte wrote in much the same Gothic mood that she brought to her 19th-century novel, Wuthering Heights. "I shall sing when night's decay/Ushers in a drearier day."

But Marty Kelly's children's book, Fall Is Not Easy (Zino), gathers science and mystery into a neat little pile, all that anyone really needs to know.

Fall is hard on kids who have to go back to school, he writes, but hardest of all on trees:

"After all, they have to change their entire appearance every year."

LEAVES FOR LITTLE LEAPERS

Leaves make for a bushel of adventures and activities, from a leaf-shuffling walk in the park to children's art activities that call for little more than leaves gathered from the backyard.

Nature art is the subject of books including Cool Crafts With Flowers, Leaves and Twigs by Jen Jones (Capstone), Look What I Did With a Leaf by Morteza E. Sohl (Walker and Co.) and Nature's Art Box by Laura C. Martin (Storey), available through many libraries including the Central Arkansas Library System.

Leaf projects include these classics:

• Leaf hunt: Find leaves from different kinds of trees, or leaves of many different colors. Paste the leaves with tacky glue on a sheet of poster board for display.

• Leaf rubbings. Place a leaf between two sheets of thin white paper. Rub over the leaf with a soft pencil or the side of a crayon to capture the leaf's shape and pattern of veins.

• Pressed leaves. Place a bright but flexible leaf between two sheets of wax paper in a heavy book. Add weight on top of the book. In a couple of weeks, the leaf will be flat and ready to be framed for keeping.

LEAFING TO CONCLUSIONS

No one had more whispering, crackling things to say about leaves than author Ray Bradbury. Leaves blow and skitter through his books, October Country, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree.

Autumn is when trees make "a great sound of letting down their dry rain," he wrote. And The Halloween Tree imagines "a leaf-tossed, kite-flying, gliding, broomstick-riding trip to learn the secret of All Hallows Eve," Oct. 31.

A shadow puppet telling of The Halloween Tree will be 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock, complete with puppet leaves. The performance is a collaboration between the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and Conway Symphony Orchestra, benefiting El Zocalo Immigrant Resource Center. More information is available at conwaysymphony.org.

HomeStyle on 10/22/2016

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