We jumped right into work this afternoon, so I didn’t get a chance to shoot any video. It was far more important to get the job done. A combination of time available and energy level led us to tackle a big, twice-a-year job — cleaning all of the leaves off the roof of the house.

At this time of year, we need to clear the roof before our annual rains arrive. We had one day of showers a few weeks ago, but the biggest rains haven’t arrived yet, thank goodness.  Here is an after picture. The before looked like 3-4 inches of leaves covering the entire roof. Not a good thing for the roof itself or for good drainage during a storm.

A leafless roof is a wonderful thing

 

Of course, all those leaves have to go somewhere, which is typically into the garden bed directly beneath that eave line — but they couldn’t stay there either. As I showed in my last “In the garden…” video, my perennial bulbs are already popping up. I didn’t want to make them work their way through a heavy layer of leaf mold to reach the sun, so together — my wife, son and I — quickly cleaned that bed, too. Here is what it looked like afterwards.

A leafless bed helps the bulbs appear

You can see some bulbs just coming up right in from the biggest agapanthus there in the middle of the photo.

So, not a bad 90 minutes work over all. We now have a large pile of leaves to run through the shredder and a few small limbs we trimmed while on the roof. The leaves will be used in the compost bins, to balance “green” kitchen waste with some partially broken down “brown” leaves and the rest will be used for top dressing some beds. The shredded leaves are excellent for weed suppression and moisture retention, we have found.

Still its more work to do this week. Tree trimmer are coming to tackle the large (and overgrown) elm in the front yard, we have some small pruning to do ourselves and there is garlic and onions that need to be put in the ground.