It's been interesting to observe the autumn traffic of organic materials, especially dead leaves, fallen and pruned branches, withering flowers and anything else that's not lawn being removed from peoples front and back yards for dumping elsewhere. Well, where I live everyone takes these materials to the local wastewater treatment plant where it's used for composting the remaining sludge. So the cycle goes on and stuff is used wisely as a resource. However I can't help feeling the hunger of the soil for those nutrients and biomass at the origin, where it's raked into big piles and hauled away.

Today I also participated this kind of trip, helping my grandparents who wanted to take away a load of leaves from their house. Little did they know however, that my motivation to participate reflected intentions of quite the opposite kind! The leaf dumping site is also an abundant oasis of branches in all shapes and sizes, a perfect selection of material for anyone wanting to tear up some lawn and plant some winter garlic and jerusalem artichokes in raised beds filled with wood material.

Long story short, we dumped the leaves, and I piled up a bunch of branches to take back. The concept was a bit confusing for my grandparents, but they understood and encouraged me on the raised bed project on their lawn. Perhaps the broad beans that grandpa likes to nibble and few other things already growing there this summer were the cause for this change of attitudes :)

I spent the day digging and laying a nice lasagne of branches, grass turf, subsoil, remaining leaves, some well manured topsoil from a local organic farmer and finally the original topsoil topped up with a "shirt" of straw. The winter garlic is in, and there are still materials left for the jerusalem artichokes. It's somehow fulfilling and rewarding to hide those "unwanted" leaves and branches underground, knowing that they will soon be converted into humus, worm castings and food. Enriching the environment we live in, and nourishing ourselves in the process. Quite nice!

Unfortunately I got so carried away with shoveling that the usual habit to document the process got pretty much neglected. Sorry about that!