Looks good.

Thanks! It's a labor of love.

The leaves and the wind always wait until the day after you're "done".

Why you should leave the leaves:

https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2015/OctNov/Gardening/Leave-the-Leaves

Dude. Spend your time working at a food pantry, not obsessing over leaves.

Just leaf it there. Eventually the wind will blow it over to the neighbors property and they can deal with it.

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I look forward to reading the “my neighbor is a piece of shit” post once the leaf finds its way over the border.

I have a few specific trees that will hold their leaves and then drop all of them on the same day, usually after clean up. I have a couple others that literally don't fall off until the snow knocks them off.

Dad??

I speak for all the Dads.

And don’t forget, they multiply come April.

GODDAMMIT

You can't just leave them, at least not in Massachusetts. They need to be mulched, or they won't break down. And mulching is still work.

Can't just leave them alone, you need to do a certain level of maintenance.

dads seem to have a really adversarial relationship with leaves

"Damnit... if I could, I would get rid of all these firggin trees out here!"

My dad 1977-2022

It's a thing.

Agreed mostly but I’d mulch them

Forested lot. If I left them all it would be a disaster

Precisely this. Your grass would be dead (little to no sunlight/"suffocated") and you'd (likely) have weeds & tree sprouts everywhere if you just left deciduous leaves as they fell. The best thing to do (IMO) is:

(1) Yes, not obsess over them (even if you do a perfect job, it's windy all winter and leftovers or your neighbor's leaves will eventually blow through - make peace with a few leaves out there, the place still looks great.)

(2) Do a decent job mulching most of them, it reduces erosion, feeds the grass, and avoids blocking the sunlight. Oh, and it's usually easier to do than raking/moving/collecting them all.