A sure icon of fall is trees and there isn't one lovelier than birch. I…
What to do When You Own a Large Oak Tree and it’s Fall
You rake of course.
And rake and rake.
We’re lucky enough to have this oak tree in front of our house. It’s one of the largest on the street and it’s just beautiful. I’m a sucker for a large, old, beautiful tree. I think they are amazing.
But every fall like clockwork the tree sheds its leaves.And sheds and sheds. I mean there are probably millions of leaves on this tree and they get all over.
On the sidewalk and street.
On the bushes.
On the little tree box. Which I would love to stain a different color next summer.
So like good neighbors, we gather them all up. I actually do rake, and not just take photos. In my cute plaid wellies 🙂
And I love the blue work gloves, does anyone else use these?
We prefer to get the paper leaf bags because eventually they decompose along with the leaves, where plastic bags last forever. But check your local recycling or leaf collection rules in your town to know which kind to use.
It’s an allover body workout, let me tell you. There’s all kinds of squatting, and scooping and pushing.

Sometimes we prefer the bend and scoop method. Kind of like the bend and snap, only with leaves. Name that movie…
And soon enough our leaves are all bagged up. This is a small number of bags compared to what our total is until every last leaf has fallen.
Want to guess how may bags we fill?
Too bad we don’t a have a tree the size of the neighbors’. Tiny!

Happy November!
P.S. This post is not sponsored by True Value, we just like to shop there for our leaf bags.
our last two houses each had huge old oaks… and we raked and raked. no oak tree at this house, but did i mention the 10 maple trees we have? oh and the pines that are shedding needles like crazy…. but i will take it any day over no trees!
Legally Blonde!
I feel your pain, my friend. We have 4 huge pin oak trees around our house. GREAT shade trees in the summer, but a pain in the tushy in the fall (sometimes literally)! Especially since they only drop half their leaves in the fall and the rest drop when the tree buds in the spring– it really is an almost year round job.