Years ago, when we moved to South Dakota from Idaho, I had a brief fantasy about how nice it would be to live in a pine forest. In Idaho, we had a host of deciduous trees in our yard. We had ornamental crab trees, a producing apple tree, a pear tree, plenty of lilacs, and a host of other shade trees. Our back yard was enclosed by a high fence, so the leaves that feel there stayed there. And in Boise, the wind doesn’t blow that often. Each fall, there was a period of time when I had to rake up all of the leaves. Our yard was large enough that I generally composted our leaves on our place, but they had to be put in the right place and the leaves had to be mixed with grass clippings and other items to compost properly. It was a little work. Now we were moving to a place with all evergreen trees. No more leaves to rake.

As I said, the fantasy was short-lived. Pine needles are harder to rake than leaves. And, unlike deciduous trees, pine trees pretty much shed needles at several points during the year. We need to rake pine needles in the fall and again in the spring.

I know what you are thinking. Why not leave the needles where they fall? That is what happens in the forest. First of all some of the needles fall in places where you don’t want them. People around here talk of rain gutter systems that have specially-designed covers so that pine needles can’t get into them. We don’t have that kind of rain gutters. If I didn’t clean the pine needles out of the rain gutters, they would become totally clogged with needles and cease to work. When the wind blows, we literally get drifts of needles in our driveway that need to be moved. Pine needles on concrete are slippery and dangerous for walking. Then there is the fire danger. Dry pine needles burn easily. They have to be raked away from the shed and house to create a zone that is more defensible from fire. And, pine needles are acidic. If they are allowed to lie on the ground, they raise the acid level so much that very little grass grows in the place where they lie. If you walk through the forest, you will notice that there are areas of bare dirt under the trees where the bulk of the needles lie.

This last quality, the acidity of the needles, means that they don’t provide good compost for the soil around here. Our soil is naturally acidic, so I have to be a little bit careful to make good compost for the garden.

So we haul our pin needles to a larger yard waste recycling facility where they are composted with lots of other organic materials to make good compost. I’ve hauled several loads of dirt from that facility to add to our garden. So, you ask, what is the big deal?

The answer is, “Nothing, really.” I don’t have anything to complain about. But it does mean quite a bit of hauling. We’ve had a couple of lovely days around here with highs in the ‘60’s, so we took advantage of the afternoons to do a bit of raking. I have a ladder rack on my pickup with steel mesh sides. The sides are a good thing, because without them, it would have taken multiple trips with a full-size, long box pickup to haul the pine needles from one raking of our yard. I haul at least two loads of a similar size every year.

We’re not too big on outdoor decorations. We like to take care of our yard, but we celebrate holidays in a more private manner. We don’t go in for all of the lights and outdoor decorations. But we have neighbors who seem to get into the spirit of each season with lots of decorations. They have special lights for Halloween and different lights for Christmas. Their Halloween decorations go up sometime in September and they transition from Halloween directly into Christmas, usually having their Christmas decorations up well before Thanksgiving. But they are always careful to take those Christmas decorations down before New Year’s, which seems a bit strange because we are late to put up the Christmas tree inside of our home in order to make sure that it will last for all 12 days of Christmas. We never take our tree down before January 6 unless we need to travel away from home during that season.

I’m not criticizing my neighbors. We are just different. I enjoy the differences, frankly. But it has been an interesting year. The dry conditions around here mean that some of us let most of our grass go dormant by mid summer. In our yard there are circles of green around the garden and around each of our trees that show where we kept the water flowing in sufficient quantity to keep the grass growing. The last time I had the mower out was in August. Since then, I have been trimming the grass with a weed eater. The deer have been keeping the green grass relatively short as they prefer it to the dry stuff they can find elsewhere.

As a result those same deer have really, really enjoyed all of the fall decorations. They look to the neighbors’ Halloween decorations as a special buffet laid out just for them. “Wow!” they seem to say, “Pumpkins? Just for me? I love pumpkins. I could eat a whole one right now!” At first I noticed that the deer had been making nighttime visits to the neighbors’ Halloween decorations. Yesterday, they gave up on that nighttime stuff and simply camped out in the neighbors’ yard all day, munching and chewing their cud.

So autumn has come to the hills. It is a beautiful time. And this morning, after I have unloaded all of those pine needles, I’ll go back to enjoying it. The job never seems too bad once it is finished.

I was right about one thing when we moved here: we are indeed lucky to live next to the forest, pine needles and all.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.