Leaves, leaves and more leaves.

One of the mainstays of my gardening routine is the annual fall collection of leaves.  It affords me time to get outside, get some exercise and collect one of the most important ingredients for my composting.  Last Saturday, our region was hit by some really heavy winds which meant a good portion of the leaves that were still on my tree were blown to other yards and even over my house. When I looked at my tree after the storms, it seemed mother nature threw me a huge curve ball by stripping away a larger percentage of the leaves from my tree than I even imagined.
Nonetheless, I went out yesterday to recover the leaves that were piling up in my back yard.  Much to my surprise, it seems that I was still left with a sizeable amount of leaves.  When all was said and done, as seen in the picture below, I was able to get 6 heavy duty bags of leaves collected.

  

Not a bad haul given the loss from the storms.  I will take these back behind my garage and let them sit in place during winter.  They should decompose a bit during this time.  If my neighbors do put their leaves on the curb for pickup, I may take a bag or two to augment my supply.  These are such a great additive to you compost that it seems such a waste to see them thrown away.

On another note, I checked in to my mini winter garden to see the progress.  As seen below, so far so good!

The lettuce and spinach are doing quite well while the carrots are slowly maturing.  All the plants seem to be on schedule.  We have had several freezes and temperatures in the 30's and the plants seem quite robust given these conditions.  Of course, the telling factor will be when we get into winter weather.  My hope is that the plants will grow to a point where I can cover them with compost thereby adding a little more protection to get them through the winter.  The lettuce probably will not make it through this.  It was a gamble that, to date, has paid off.  I am told that carrots and spinach that have been exposed to colder temps taste better.  We shall see.  And as I have said, this is an experiment that I undertook just to stay active in the garden.  I will have to water them today which should get them through the week.  Winter gardening requires much less work than summer ones.  

Well, that's all for now.  Hope you are enjoying whatever gardening you are doing.  Happy gardening everyone!