September was like summer, warm and sunny; October, till today. was mostly cold and rainy. Today was a beautiful sunny fall day, at last.

Although most of the leaves are still on the trees, it is time to begin raking. Leaves form from the tree buds in the spring, grow on the tree branches throughout the summer and with fall change colors, die and fall where the wind may take them. My neighbor, like most residents, was raking his leaves into the street.

Leaves are like manna from nature. These leaves of the tree are rich in nutrients gathered by the tree from the soil. Left to themselves they fall to enrich the soil once more.

My neighbor, like most residents of Milwaukee, rakes the leaves off of the lawn and garden onto the street where the city of Milwaukee collects them and pays a contractor to haul them away to a field in the country. There they rot, compress and form a rich composted soil which the contractors sells to a manufacturer who, perhaps after adding chemicals, sells it back to residents of Milwaukee as soil or fertilizer.

I and some others leave our leaves on the grass or rake them into piles and put them in our compost piles. There they mix with other ingredients and make rich soil to be consumed by worms and changed into castings or to put back into lawn and garden as rich organic soil. We profit from the leaves and the city saves money.

This second scenario of recycling leaves into organic soil seems only natural and logical. Many of the city and suburbs do as we do and recycle the leaves. They collect leaves like Milwaukee but rather than contracting some vendor to take them away, let them naturally compost and make them available to citizens.

Leaves are like manna from the trees. Individuals in some local governments take them and use them to feed the soil base. Milwaukee pays someone to make the manna to sell back to us.

I have written to the City of Milwaukee and some environment groups about the city doing as individuals and other cities do, making use of this manna from trees. There is no response or interest. We ask where do all the leaves go; they were a long time coming. When will we ever learn?

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