I figured out that the reason so few people around here plant trees in their yards is so they don’t have to deal with leaves. The trees you do see are ones with small leaves you can pick up with a lawnmower. Big leaves get blown to the curb where the city picks them up with a vacuum truck.

Very civilized.

Kim’s FIL hit a deer two weeks ago. Demolished the van and they’re lucky no one was hurt. Apparently this is fairly common. Does anyone use deer whistles any more?

Houses with sunrooms are very popular here. I think the original purpose was to harvest heat during sunny winter days but they’re called “three season rooms”. What does one do in a sunroom you wouldn’t do in a family room?

I’ve seen several houses where they’ve mounted a bronze eagle over the garage door. Google says it’s supposed to indicate that the mortgage is paid off. Is this common? If you refinance do you take it down?

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Kim’s FIL hit a deer two weeks ago. Demolished the van and they’re lucky no one was hurt.

Ugh, sorry to hear that, but glad no one was hurt!

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Does anyone use deer whistles any more?

My mother used to when she lived in small town upstate NY and drove around the country side all the time. But she said that ultimately, research showed they don't really work. She just tried to drive very carefully. Not particularly helpful

I'm in the middle major leaf pickup mode my autumn exercise program. It's work, but I enjoy being out in the cool weather and I compost most of the leaves and use the finished compost in my gardens.

We had deer whistles on the minivan we used to drive up to Door County. We never hit a deer in 30 years, but we also weren't out on the roads a lot in the autumn around dusk, which is when a lot of the collisions happen. edit: And as SK noted, I've read that they don't really work anyway.

Sunroom/three season rooms are an insect-free substitute for a deck or patio. No skeeters or yellowjackets, the main summer nuisances. Lots of windows mean you can open everything to make it feel like you're sitting outside without having to turn off the A/C for the rest of the house.

And yes, they allow you stretch the outside living feeling into spring and autumn. We use an electric space heater if we need a little help out there during the cooler months.

I am unfamiliar with the eagle tradition. Maybe it's a northern Ohio thing like the stamped brick concrete foundations....

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Originally posted by wtg:
I am unfamiliar with the eagle tradition. Maybe it's a northern Ohio thing like the stamped brick concrete foundations....

The Realtor told us that the basement walls are actually poured concrete and the pattern is created with forms they re-use from house to house.

Big article recently about how many overwintering beneficial insects you destroy by picking up your leaves. I’ve left them the last couple of years, letting them mulch under the bushes. And we get enough wind here that they mostly blow away into all the neighbor’s yards anyway.

I’ve heard of mortgage burning parties when the mortgage is paid off but not mounting a bronze eagle over a garage door. It must be a local tradition.

All the houses I’ve seen in my area that have a sun room have a detached garage located a short distance away from the house. Like 10 feet or so. The sun room connects the house to the garage so it’s not necessary to venture outside. I don’t think these houses were originally built with the sun room. It looks like they were later added on.

Raking leaves and bagging them is a time consuming chore especially if they're big trees. Most landscaping firms use portable back pack air blowers and blow the leaves into a corner rather than raking them up.

What Q-L is describing is called a breezeway in these parts. I'd say it's a predecessor to the sunroom/three season room, something that was built in the days when garages were detached. It was mostly to allow people to travel between their house and garage and not get wet in rain or snow. People figured out they were a great place to sit in the summer time.

Newer homes pretty much always have attached garages and the three season room evolved.

I've never seen a landscaper blow leaves into a corner and leave them. Around here all they blow the leaves out of the flower beds and onto the lawn, and then pick them up with their huge hulking mowers as they mow the lawn, and cart everything away.

I've always mulch-mowed. Better for the lawn if you don't demand that manicured-perfection look. Many times I would mow multiple times a week to just grind up the new ones that dropped...

Even when we lived on a forested lot, this is possible to do.

I used to do that when I had a gas mower. The battery powered mower doesn't do as good a job. It's the one and only thing I miss about the gas mower.

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I figured out that the reason so few people around here plant trees in their yards is so they don’t have to deal with leaves. The trees you do see are ones with small leaves you can pick up with a lawnmower. Big leaves get blown to the curb where the city picks them up with a vacuum truck.

Very civilized.

Kim’s FIL hit a deer two weeks ago. Demolished the van and they’re lucky no one was hurt. Apparently this is fairly common. Does anyone use deer whistles any more?

Houses with sunrooms are very popular here. I think the original purpose was to harvest heat during sunny winter days but they’re called “three season rooms”. What does one do in a sunroom you wouldn’t do in a family room?

I’ve seen several houses where they’ve mounted a bronze eagle over the garage door. Google says it’s supposed to indicate that the mortgage is paid off. Is this common? If you refinance do you take it down?

Can't imagine properties without trees. They are so beneficial. Hate landscapers lazy loud blowers.

I rake and compost.

Sunrooms take the place of sitting on the lawn. Another waste.

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The battery powered mower doesn't do as good a job. It's the one and only thing I miss about the gas mower.

What kind of battery-powered mower do you have? We have battery too but I think it works ok for mulching (need to double check that with Mr. SK)

We have the EGO. It mulches fine for mowing the lawn and it does a passable job on leaves, but the gas mower really pulverized the carp out of the leaves.

At our Missoula house, the 80 year old maple gave fabulous shade in the hot summers, but shed so many leaves in the fall, mr. Pique threatened to cut it down. Tenants were never happy about hauling all those leaves to the street, either.

Where we live now, the wind is so ferocious the leaves are all gone before they hit the ground.

Next door neighbor has at least 20 large trash bags filled with leaves. They will go with the trash to a local trash to energy incinerator.

I mow and rake, with the leaves ending up in corners and the woods to decompose, but I always leave them to the last minute hoping they will blow away.

I have about a dozen Norway Maples in my yard. Good for shade and bird habitat but the leaves and seedlings are a PITA.

Jf

The eagle over the garage door was a big thing where I grew up. My parents had one and our mortgage was by no means paid off. I think it started as part of the patriotic-everything zeitgeist that developed around the US Bicentennial in 1976 and it became a decorating fad that stuck around for a decade or so, fading out by like the late 80s. So if you are looking at homes built during that time period, that would explain the prevalence. I know my parents built their home in 1979 and that eagle went up within a month of us moving in. Nothing to do with the mortgage. Pretty much everyone on our street had one.

Deer - they are everywhere around here. My parents taught me and I taught/am teaching my kids - know that deer are more active at dawn/dusk but never let your guard down even in broad daylight. Drive slow and scan the sides of the roads constantly looking for them. Where you see one, there's more, guaranteed, so slow to a crawl and keep your eyes on a swivel. And then hope you get lucky...no one in my family has ever actually struck a deer (knock wood) but my dad had one run full speed smack into the SIDE of his car once. Made a nice dent and knocked the deer unconscious for a few moments, but it got up and ran away.

Leaves - raking sucks, but I've never actually heard of people not planting trees because they don't want to rake. That's weird. You just deal with a weekend or two spent raking (by that time, lawn mowing season is done so it's basically just reallocating that time), or you let them blow away and/or decompose on their own.

Sunrooms - no comment - don't have one and never have.