Mid-November is just starting to offer up some seasonably cool weather, and there are now more leaves off the trees than on. In some Baristaville towns, this means unusual driving conditions. Leaf piles, sometimes as big as a car, line Maplewood roadways, as the DPW starts to merge individual household piles with those of their neighbors. Certain blocks look more like a slalom course than suburban streets.
Streets in our other towns are lined with bagged leaves, representing back-aching work by residents. And all over Baristaville, the landscape trucks are out sucking up the fallen tree debris like our own species of suburban NJ ant-eaters.
After yesterday’s rain, the leaves are also slippery this morning. One Maplewood NJ Transit rider said this on Clever Commute today:
Holy wet leaves Batman. 8:31 overshoots Maplewood station. Back of the train will probably be crowded.
How’s your leaf life going? Take our poll and give us a “State of the Leaf” report for your piece of Baristaville.
Remember the days when we had leaf pickup? Too bad we’re incompetently managed. Can we join Maplewood?
The oak tree in my backyard was so charming until I moved into the house and November rolled around.
I thought state law now forbids piling leaves into the street due to storm water runoff, yet I’m seeing leaf mountains in Maplewood, Livingston, etc.
In Glen Ridge we have to bag them, and the town picks them up. It’s a bit onerous, but it must prevent a lot of storm sewer clogging. The other day I drove through a leaf-dust storm from a landscape vehicle vacuuming leaves up. It was intense, and not one of those guys was wearing a mask.
Kit, I think the towns were permitted to decide whether to pick them up within a certain time frame (maybe, a week?) *or* require bagging. So if the town is small/efficient enough, they could conceivably drive around with a vacuum truck every day and save us from Thanksgiving Weekend Leaf Cleanup.
BTW the poll is incomplete. Where is the choice for “watch out the window while the husband and kids do all the work” ??!
Kay is right. Street pickup is permitted if the township can get them picked up with in one week.
Management. Competent. Totally lacking in Montclair.
I think an additional reason to move away from piling leaves in the street was safety. Wet leaves are slippery, piles of leaves obscure people and parked cars and if the catalytic converter comes in contact with dry leaves, a fire may result.
“I think an additional reason to move away from piling leaves in the street was safety. Wet leaves are slippery, piles of leaves obscure people and parked cars and if the catalytic converter comes in contact with dry leaves, a fire may result.”
Yes. During the years of this practice in Montclair we had maybe zero serious fires due to this. In fact, it’s a wonder Maplewood yet stands at all.
The leaves in our backyward get moved to the compost heaps. The leaves in front get raked or blown to the curb where they are picked up by trucks every other week in the fall. One of the things I like about living in West Orange.
I remember the days of raking the leaves to the street…very nice, much easier than bagging, but a drag when early snow fell and froze it all into a leaf cube!
There is a Michelin 3-star restaurant in Chicago that plates burning oak leaves as a garnish to one of their dishes. I have contracted with them to come and take all my leaves and ship them west on the 20th Century Limited. Problem solved. Article on Alinea here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/dining/17alinea.html?ref=dining
The whole storm water runoff canard is just that. Got to give them points for creativity though. Clearly just a reduction in services that just about every other suburban community manages to deliver. They were able to pull it off largely because so many people use gardeners, so leaf pick-up just sort of happens. I figured out what my landscaper was charging and figured that I had the requisite skill set, so figured I’d save a few thousand bucks and took on the job my self a few years ago. What I hadn’t counted on was the significant time and effort to not only bag the leaves, but to clean the street as well. Pretty much the most frequent thought running through my mind while I’m out there raking leaves out of the gutter is the twenty-something thousand dollars I’m paying in property tax. I’ve thought about getting the landscaper back, but at the end of the day I’d rather save the money.
Whatever happened to the days when people had their kids or local kids do these jobs, like when we were growing up?
I have been lucky enough to find a college-student-neighbor who does all of the landscaping plus our annual leaf cleanup. I keep him in gasoline for the rest of the year. I am in serious negotiations with his teachers to have him flunk a couple of courses so he might have to take 5 or 6 years to get his degree.
The leaves in front get raked or blown to the curb where they are picked up by trucks every other week in the fall. One of the things I like about living in West Orange.
Yeah, but if you live in West Orange and get leaf pick-up, you have to put up with their level of property tax increase – SO THERE!
/oh, wait a minute…
and the WO schools are making AYP at a higher rate then here in Friedland.
Really, I’m serious, is there a way to de-incorporate and be annexed by West Orange?
I’ll sign the petition with you, ROC. If the current situation isn’t enough to force their hand, nothing will. The town is the best place to live in America! We can’t change a thing! Pay up!
West Orange has high property taxes, too, but the muni taxes have been flat for the past 3 years so at least our leaders aren’t clueless.
Back in the 50′s & 60′s, growing up in Verona was a time when leaf burning was permitted in front of one’s home. Seriously, all homeowners did this with garden hose nearby. It was a lot of fun and all the kids were anticipating the final event. Rake them to the curb, lite a match and presto, end of problem. Can’t even imagine the idea nowadays. Ah memories; the smell of burning leaves in Autumn.
I remember they used to sell those trash cans with the holes in them so that people could burn their leaves. In Chatham, up until the early 70′s, the town used to vacuum the leaves from the curb, haul them to the dump, and then burn them in a giant conflagration. I can’t figure out why they burned them, since they would decompose so quickly..
Good thing that our town has prevented the innumerable catastrophes and car fires that must still be plaguing the more solvent, well managed, but less enlightened communities as their residents careen wildly around mounds of leaves, mowing down pedestrians hidden behind them, until their cars finally go up in smoke as their catalytic converters ignite from contact with the detritus.