Here’s a good one:
Another important function here in the north is that leaf litter is an essential refuge for invertebrates during the snowy winter months.
Counterpoint: it’s also a great refuge for harboring ticks. This is something I always think about when I see cartoons of people jumping into leaf piles.
Take it from me, I learned from childhood experience trying to copy those stupid comics. A pile of leaves doesn’t actually offer much of a cushion for landing on your ass.
For the last 10 years, I’ve been leaving the leaves in place. I don’t mulch them until spring. This annoys one of my leaf and lawn obsessive neighbors no end. Fortunately, we don’t have an HOA in our neighborhood. It must be doing some good because for the last few seasons the fireflies have been putting on a show in my yard. People stop and watch them. The kids love it. I’ve been wondering what would happen if I let the lawn go to seed. I suspect it would revert to its natural state, mixed hardwood and pine woodland.
Oh, you gotta mulch. You’ve got to.
Another excuse for me to be lazy. Leaves I’m fine with. Oak pollen in spring turning my vehicle yellow not so much. Tree still enacting revenge for severing some of its branches a few years ago.
Quite a busy illustration.
We’re with larpar. Mulch is a must do. We’ve brought in mulch for some our property after we got rid of the juniper in the front (required by the fire dept.) and the sod grass in the back. We don’t throw much leaf matter. We also compost almost everything from the kitchen that’s plant based. I even stripped the needles off some redwood starts we had cut down so they could mulch. Great for some of the bird species that visit our garden, namely quail, also the lizards.
On the subject of ticks.
I’ve heard of “tick tubes”: take an empty toilet paper cardboard tube, and stuff in some cotton balls that have been sprayed with permethrin. Drop them in your bushes.
Mice love the cotton balls for nest material, and the permethrin will repel ticks, breaking the tick cycle between deer and mice for deer-ticks (the tiny ones, that spread Lyme disease).
Best to do it in the spring? Probably? Maybe ask a biologist that knows invertebrates, if you know any.
The only problem I have with permethrin is that it’s a repellent instead of a toxin, and I really want to see ticks touch something and immediately curl up and die. I’m a meanie that way.
I have to say that the word “counterpoint” applied thus hurts me physically, not least because counterpoint usually stands for many voices developing together in harmony.
@ 5 Morales
AI.
;-)
Don’t forget about wandering Greek heroes who have been washed up on strange lands after being shipwrecked while trying to reach home!
By the way, in Australia this would be a great way to have your yard full of rodents and poisonous snakes (who feed on the rodents). Here’s a typical list of advice for how not to have your yard full of poisonous snakes in Australia:
https://mustcarevets.com.au/blogs/snake-bites/how-to-avoid-snakes-in-your-backyard-practical-tips-for-pet-owners/
(my bolding)
Here, snakes are no joke:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_brown_snake
Another counterpoint-yellowjackets build nests in old piles of leaves. A fact my daughter learned the hard way when she went to jump in an old pile of leaves and ended up with multiple stings; quite a traumatic experience. But she obviously moved on, as she is now a Yellowjacket herself as a student at Georgia Tech.
Didn’t know there were ten-legged beetles.