Taking Care of the Leaves

The leaves are raked up and it looks like it’s done for the season.  If there is anything about fall that I hate, it is having to deal with leaves.  Depending on where you live there are certain restrictions on how you can get rid of leaves.  When I was living in Niles, we couldn’t burn our leaves.  Instead, we had to rake them to the curb and the city would come by on designated days to suck ‘em up and haul it away.  Other places allow you to burn leaves but they must be done in an enclosed container.  Where I live now, we’re technically allowed to burn open piles but we have to get a permit.  The reality is that we could probably light the whole lawn on fire and it wouldn’t be an issue.  So we burned this year.  Personally I would rather we mulch, but there’s still a bunch of debris left over from last year.  I guess my parents didn’t want to add to it so they picked out  place on the lawn, piled the leaves together and burned away.  I’d say our carbon footprint is sixteen square feet.  Oh… that’s not how to do it?