“The leaf collection company for my neighborhood has absurdly strict rules about where leaves must be for pickup,” the Redditor Nillanute4283 wrote in a post that amassed 13k upvotes.
Turns out the author’s property has 40-50 oak trees and two sugar maples, which, in his own words, add up to “leaves. Lots of leaves.” But the leaf company seemed to be oblivious to that fact and did not let the author use a longer curb he shared with the neighbor on which to put that huge amount of leaves.
So the Redditor took it as a challenge and maliciously complied, ending up creating something that became somewhat of a fun sensation in the neighborhood.
A resident with a lot of trees on their property maliciously complies with an “absurdly strict rule” of their leaf-collecting company
Image credits: Alex Sever (not the actual photo)
Image credits: zydeaosika (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Tim Evanson (not the actual photo)
Image credits: nillanute4283
There were so many leaves on the author’s property that they would have burned out his lawn tractor motor
The author of this story later shared an update clarifying some aspects about this whole situation in response to the commentator’s question.
“It’s a lot of leaves and most of them fell within two days. They covered 1/2 acre of land, 3 to 6 inches thick and I could see no grass. Attempting to mow/mulch them would have burned out my lawn tractor motor. Even mulched, I think they would result in a significant layer that would suffocate the grass before they could break down to feed it. I might try mulching next year, though.”
The OP indeed paid the neighbors for their leaves so he could “legitimately claim the leaves to be his”
Image credits: RODNAE Productions (not the actual photo)
The Redditor explained that he paid the neighbors “so that I could legitimately claim the leaves to be mine” and added that “to be fair, they thought I was mental.”
“This is something I did so I could meet the letter of the law that only ‘my’ leaves were in the pile. In case you were confused like others were, I paid $1 to each neighbor (3 of them), not $1 for each leaf. Since this whole game was inspired by this subreddit, I wanted to make sure I fully met the ‘compliance’ requirements.”
Apparently, the leaf pickup companies exist as a solution to leaf burning which is banned in his county
The author was also asked how a company exists to pick leaves up: “Like there is that many people they can make a living off this, are these leaves like, dangerous?” someone wondered.
The OP responded by saying that the danger is leaf burning. “The swanky neighborhoods in the county (a district approximately 480 square miles (774 sq km) in area) includes over 33000 homes outside the limits of the established cities. There’s still a lot of farmland in this part of the U.S. To maintain lawns (in many cases, lawn standards are enforced by neighborhood associations called Home Owners Associations or HOAs), leaves are raked / blown / gathered, but most individual home owners have nowhere to put them.”
In the past, “hospital visits would skyrocket,” because of the smoke from leaf burning
Image credits: Eva Bronzini (not the actual photo)
Moreover, according to the author, “they used to burn the leaves, but it would result in a smoke haze that would last weeks and trigger every asthmatic. Hospital visits would skyrocket. Even before all the respiratory complications with Covid, the county had banned leaf burning.”
“Since they banned burning, though, they had to provide an alternative. They chose to contract with the largest lawn service company in the area, who used the contract to build up a fleet of leaf collection trucks. They collect leaves in the fall and the spring. I don’t know if those trucks get used in the winter and summer,” the author explained.
The author was happy to answer some more questions in the comments
The post Leaf Collection Company Sets Ridiculous Requirements, Man Collects All The Neighborhood’s Leaves To Build A 12-Foot Pile first appeared on Bored Panda.
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