Leaves: Blown

Barley, a dog, stands on wet grass. Ahead of her, all the fallen leaves have been corralled around the trunks of leaves and lampposts, as and to the edge of the grass.

I understand the liability motivation for the unending scourge of autumn leafblowing: keep the paths clear, minimize the risks of people slipping and falling. If you own a property with a lot of foot traffic, you’re playing with fire if you don’t have folks honkin’ and whonkin’ those dangerous leaves. What’s a little weirder to me is the aesthetic of leafblowing as it applies to stretches of lawn. Surely, if there is wet and muddy grass, some level of slippage is inevitable, and surely, if the paths themselves are clear, pedestrians should have a clear idea of where they are expected to walk. And yet, the standard practice in these parts is to give every tall object (tree, streetlight, fence, hedge) a halo of dead leaves and clear the grass. It’s not a small amount of extra work, so there must be a reason for it, but maybe it’s nothing more than that some people want fall to look tidy? Mysteries upon mysteries.