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Leave the Leaves, and the Flowers!

11/19/2023

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Care for Creation
November 19, 2023
Leave the Leaves, and the Flowers!


​The teachings of Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum tell us to form new habits to ensure that our amazing Earth can be passed down to new generations. Let’s consider looking at fall garden clean-up activities with new eyes.  
We know that sustainable approaches to fall leaves are becoming mainstream; the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) designated October as “National Leave the Leaves Month.”  David Mizejewski, a naturalist with NWF, says leaves from trees and bushes “fall right around the root zone of the plant where they do things like suppress weeds, retain soil moisture, and then they slowly break down and compost and return their nutrients right to the roots of the plant…That sounds an awful lot like mulch and fertilizer.”
Let’s expand this idea to our planting beds and perennial gardens. Instead of cutting and pulling the spent flowers, let’s look at the brown stems and flowers as cozy winter nests for wildlife. Lady beetles, butterflies and other insects will bed down among the stalks during the cold season and birds will dine on the seeds of sunflowers, coneflowers, grasses and other plants.
Instead of sending bags of organic garden matter to the landfill, we can leave the stalks and flower heads standing. Instead of buying and hauling in mulch for the beds, we can use leaves from our trees to cover the beds, keeping moisture in the soil, preventing erosion and soil compaction, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and small creatures such as lizards, frogs, toads, bumble bees and other native bees.  The leaves decompose, enrich the soil, and decrease or eliminate the need for added fertilizer. 
 In Laudate Deum, Pope Francis reminds us that “a healthy ecology is also the result of interaction between human beings and the environment, as occurs in the indigenous cultures and has occurred for centuries in different regions of the earth.”  LD 27
Let’s strive to increase awareness of our relationship with and impact on the natural world around us. Let’s look with new eyes, as St. Francis of Assisi taught, on Brother Sun, Mother Earth, Sister Water, and all creatures with whom we share the goodness of this earth as well as those who will follow us who also have a right to these blessings.  Building a new relationship with the environment of our own yards can be one more habit toward living in productive harmony with all creation.



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    Care for Creation Blog Team share information on variety of topics and initiatives, in an effort to educate and increase awareness of Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home.

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