A late Fall in Los Angeles

Leaves
Originally uploaded by dewelch

After warmer than normal Fall, we have finally had several weeks of cooler temperatures, including some down near freezing here in the San Fernando Valley. This, along with some rain earlier and a lot of wind today has seemed to kick all the deciduous trees into leaf drop. We had a good 3 inches of leaves on the driveway this morning with more still falling. Probably by next week we will be ready to rake, blow and mulch as much as we can to dress the rose beds and others. What is left will be used to top off the composts bins and maybe we will just start a plain old leaf mold pile in one corner of the back garden.

We have made some very nice compost in our new bins, so I am greatly inclined to keep up the practice. All of our non-meat kitchen waste goes in for the "green" component with leaves making up the bulk of the brown. It isn't a perfect ratio, but it seems to break down over time.

I am hoping er see a bit more rain soon. January and February are typically our wettest months, but we haven't had much precipitation so far. Wish us luck. These long periods of drought are tough on the garden.