Vox clamantis in deserto
Huge restaurant chain’s curious origins
A New England Historical Society article tells of the very unusual partnership that created the Connecticut-based Subway restaurant chain.
The article starts:
“Peter Buck was a 35-year-old Yankee with a Ph.D. in physics. Fred Deluca was an Italian American teenager who grew up in a New York City housing project. They lived 40 miles apart. In 1965, they formed a business partnership that became Subway Restaurants.’’
Here’s the article:
Watching for predators
“Observation Post” (pastel), by Marcia Hill, in the group show “The Artist Next Door,’’ at the T.W. Wood Museum, Montpelier, Vt., through Nov. 21.
Kept in their place
The Indian Harbor Yacht Club, in Greenwich, Conn.
“But stepping aboard the launch, I felt the net,
woven so carefully by so many hands,
the seamless, almost miraculously strong,
transparent canopy that keeps everyone
in Greenwich exquisitely and forever in place.’’
From “The Net (Long Island Sound, 1960),” by Peter Harris, American poet. The poem is set at the exclusive Indian Harbor Yacht Club.
Here’s the whole poem:
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/antholog/harris/thenet.htm
Llewellyn King: U.S. Democratic Socialists should look abroad and decide what they really support
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, America’s best-known Democratic Socialist.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Historically in parts of the British Isles, there were shortages of family names which is why a disproportionate number of the Welsh are called Evans, Jones or Williams.
Yes, my first name is Welsh, but I believe we were of untrammeled English stock with possibly a smidgen of Dutch.
I mention these things because names, and what they mean, are becoming troublesome or seem to be.
The Democratic Socialists of America might rue that name. They might have gone for one with less baggage — perhaps the New Democrats, The Fair Vote Party or the Better Shake Democrats.
They are Democrats and they haven’t fallen far from the tree. But calling themselves socialists is causing good country club Republicans to shake uncontrollably, spilling their martinis, olives and all.
Socialism is a toxic term for most Americans. Classically, it is a political philosophy which posits the means of production and distribution should be owned by the state.
You might note that it isn’t indistinguishable from communism, which, in the days of the Soviet Union, kept the Russians and their vassal states in subjugation.
But that isn’t what today’s Democratic Socialists want. Even if they haven’t articulated it well, what New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and that old warrior of the left, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, want is the kind of democratic socialism that Scandinavian and Nordic countries practice, and mostly pull off: a government-provided social network plus capitalism. {Editor’s note: David Morales, almost certainly the next mayor of Providence, is a Democratic Socialist.}
For those countries, this means high taxes, free education, free health care, subsidized but good transportation, and annual six-week vacations. It also includes tax-funded parental leave — where both the father and the mother can stay at home for lengthy periods.
Ostentatious wealth is frowned upon. For those on the bottom rung of the income ladder, there are comprehensive aid services.
Underlying not just Scandinavian-Nordic socialism (AKA social democracy) is a desire to perfect society, to make it fairer and kinder.
In two countries I know something about, Finland and Sweden, I find people proud of their social-democratic systems, but also railing against them for the smothering nature of the state.
U.S. left-wingers support socialism because they want a genteel, kind world. They don’t want what we have now: some with billions and some homeless. They want health care without strings for the sick, and freedom from the fear of financial ruin from catastrophic illness.
Britain, which has an extensive social network, is a country suffering under an unsustainable burden of good intentions. Welfare provisions, known as “benefit” aren’t only killing the British economy, but also the British spirit.
The Wall Street Journal, in a clear piece of reporting, details the nightmare of good intentions that is impoverishing Britain. As the Journal pointed out, in some circumstances, a patient with a real or imaginary phobia can get a new leased car every three years. A phobia or a “fiddle”?
Somewhere in its post-war history, the idea of a fiddle — a little something on the side — became part of the Brit psyche.
When I worked for a newspaper in Fleet Street, like other reporters, I had access to a motor pool of drivers who drove us around London as we needed. They also did editorial assistant jobs, like finding the nearest phone box — which, in those days before cell phones, were so important.
The driver I had was a huge man who, of course, was nicknamed “Tiny.” One day, Tiny confided to me that he had another job. While he was driving for the editorial side of the newspaper, he was simultaneously signed up as a delivery-truck driver and getting fully paid for a job he never did.
When I told him that was appalling, he said, “It’s my fiddle, everyone has a fiddle. What about your expenses? Aren’t they a fiddle?”
Well, they were. Reporters were compensated by “expenses.” They were told how much to overcharge the company and held to it. Newspapers allowed differences over and above what we actually spent.
I mention this to explain how the British welfare system has been so abused, and how the British are at peace with cheating the system.
The government — the “nanny state,” as it is called — tries to ease all human difficulties, and it has reached a point where the real economy can’t afford the social welfare it has been so proud of providing.
France and other countries that have taken this gentler socialism route have also found themselves choked by it.
The Democratic Socialists of America need to decide what they are for and what it will cost. Being hostile to the status quo isn’t a policy.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international energy-sector consultant. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.
The symbolism of clothes
“On My Time” (colored pencils, toned paper), by Mark Zieff, in his show “Life Force,’’ at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, Nov. 5-Nov. 29.
He writes:
“As an industrial designer and artist, I have always been fascinated with older, everyday household objects – the well-worn, used and imperfect. I use my artwork to explore the relationships between object and user; both the physical and emotional connection we have with inanimate objects.
“Our relationship with clothing is the most unique among man-made objects and can be both physical and emotional as well as spiritual. Many of us attach deep sentimental and psychological value to our clothing, making them powerful nostalgic links to the past. Some believe that fabrics absorb the spiritual energy and memories of the people who wore them, creating a lasting energetic presence.
“The central theme of this body of work is classic workwear – the simple, rugged attire worn by craftsmen, factory workers, tradespeople and others who perform manual work. These clothes have deep roots in our history and symbolize the individuality, grit and resiliency of those who labored to build and shape our communities and industries.”
Stefano Tijerina: How U.S. and Canada’s energy systems are very tightly integrated
Transmission lines near the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, in southwestern New Brunswick. New Brunswick Power Corporation provides electricity to 60,000 customers in Maine.
From The Conversation, except for image above. New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is a donor to The Conversation, which is a nonprofit organization.
The 50% tariffs imposed by President Trump’s administration on imports from Canada in July 2026, and the reciprocal 50% tariffs imposed by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s administration on imports to Canada from the U.S. a month later, do not include oil and natural gas. Electricity and some petroleum products were also left out, although they remain subject to a 10% tariff imposed in 2025.
That’s because the two countries’ energy systems and markets are so intertwined that tariffs would devastate both economies. Canada is the biggest supplier of foreign petroleum to the United States, supplying half of all its petroleum imports. It is also the only direct foreign supplier of electricity to the U.S., with 34 major transmission points moving electricity from Canada south across the border.
In truth, Canada could shut down those power links and leave thousands of Americans in the dark, as Ontario provincial Premier Doug Ford threatened in August 2026.
But researchers like me, who study the historical links that have shaped Canadian and U.S. business relations, know that over the past 50 years Canada has expanded its energy production with one specific goal: serving U.S. consumption. In 2024, 84% of Canadian oil production and 76% of Canadian electricity production were exported to the U.S. Without American buyers, there is no real energy market in Canada.
Early connections
Since the second half of the 19th Century, energy generated on both sides of the border – and across them – has connected the two nations. The Great Lakes Basin was the hydraulic center of energy interconnectivity, as both nations shared the energy generated by Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence River.
During the early stages of World War II, even before the U.S. entered the fight, Canada and the U.S. started to integrate their energy systems. That work was part of joint security efforts to protect North America through the integration of defense manufacturing production systems.
The Ogdensburg Declaration of 1940 and the 1941 Hyde Park Declaration consolidated and formalized the strategic economic and military cooperation between the two countries and set the foundations for future collaboration.
Ambassador Bridge, linking Windsor, Ontario, with Detroit, Mich., is just one of many border crossings vital to both nations’ economies. Steven_Kriemadis/iStock / Getty Images Plus
From cooperation to integration
After the war, Canadian and U.S. businesses liked the idea of sharing production and manufacturing operations, even beyond war-related work.
Nevertheless, manufacturing on both sides of the border went back to prewar ways of producing things domestically. Nationalist voices opposed the idea of further integrating the Canadian and U.S. economies.
Less than two decades after the war ended, though, the two nations signed the Auto Pact of 1965, which eliminated tariffs on cars, trucks and automotive parts. Canadian parts manufacturers could compete directly with those based in the U.S., all to serve U.S. automakers.
This initial experiment in free trade revealed to businesses on both sides of the border that supply chain integration could benefit other production and service industries.
By 1989, the two countries had signed a full-scale free trade agreement that removed tariffs for goods crossing the border in either direction. That opened the door for more closely integrating their energy markets too.
In 1992, a U.S. federal law changed a wide swath of regulations over the country’s energy markets. Some of the provisions allowed Canadian companies to sell excess energy to the U.S., and two years later the North American Free Trade Agreement brought Mexico into the relationship too.
NAFTA integrated the production, processing and distribution of thousands of goods and services across all three countries.
Hydro-Québec operates several dams on Canadian waterways that provide power not only to Canada but also to the U.S. Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
But it was the interconnection of energy infrastructure that turned the Canadian and U.S. economies into one single energy market. Today, four major U.S. electrical grids depend on imported power from Canada: those serving the six New England states, New York state, 15 states across the Midwest and the South, and California.
Moreover, there are more than 40 natural gas and petroleum liquids pipelines connecting Canada with the United States. And although energy products move back and forth across the border, the U.S. has an energy trade deficit with Canada. Much of the U.S. economy runs on Canadian energy, and much of Canada’s energy production is sold to the U.S.
The current reality on the ground shows an integrated energy system between the two nations: something very difficult and costly to untangle, and a process that would take decades to reengineer.
Local impact
Today, those links form the basis for very tight integration between the two countries’ business and industrial marketplaces.
For example, Maine, where I live and work, gets close to 30% of its electricity from Canada.
The state’s northern electrical grid is run by the New Brunswick Power Corp., owned by the province of New Brunswick, which serves close to 60,000 Mainers.
Today, Maine’s electric grid is owned mostly by foreign interests, including ENMAX, the municipally owned utilities corporation of Calgary, Alberta, and the owner of Versant Power, which serves 16% of Maine’s market. And 80% is served by Central Maine Power, which is owned by Iberdrola from Spain.
Canadian energy reaches deeper into the U.S., too. In 2025, Hydro-Quebec, a company that generates electricity from dams across the province of Quebec, secured a deal with local regulators to use Maine as a corridor to supply clean energy to Massachusetts. Hydro-Quebec is owned by the government of the province of Quebec.
The bilateral integration of energy infrastructure over the past 30-plus years explains why this sector was exempt from the most recent tariffs.
Stefano Tijerina is a senior lecturer on management at the University of Maine.
He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The University of Maine provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
Bay Stater: Volcano or ‘unblossoming stalk’
From The WPA Guide to Massachusetts. The WPA did many such guidebooks during The Great Depression as part of the Federal Writers Project. There have been a few demographic changes since then!
“Many symbols have been devised to explain the Bay Stater. He has been pictured as a kind of dormant volcano, the red-hot lava from one eruption hardening into a crater which impedes the next; as a river, with two main currents of transcendental metaphysics and catchpenny opportunism running side by side; as an asocial discord consisting mainly of overtones and undertones; as a petrified backbone, that ‘unblossoming stalk.’’’
—The WPA Guide to Massachusetts (1937)
Quilting comfort
“American Gothic” (cotton and polyester), by Luke Haynes, in the show “American Stories from Sargent to O’Keeffe: A Partnership With the Newark Museum of Art,’’ through Oct. 10, 2027, at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn.
He says:
“I’m an architect turned professional quilter. I believe that quilts are sculptural objects and have the ability to recreate regenerative environments of comfort, both emotional and physical.’’\
Armed for global warming
“Twister” (oil on canvas), by Nancy Morgan Barnes, at Greenhut Galleries, Portland, Maine, Nov. 6-Nov. 29.
The gallery says:
“Nancy Morgan Barnes is a narrative realist. Often the concept of the narrative has led us to make-believe worlds of the ideal and a daydreaming of better times. Through the composing in all of her works, one finds explicitly rendered chaos and order….things are not as they appear.’’
Ghosts of Boston Common
The Central Burying Ground, on the Boylston Street side of Boston Common
“The Great Elm” (aka “The Hanging Tree”), on Boston Common)
Edited from a Boston Guardian article by Mannie Lewis
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
It may be a central gathering spot for tourists and families, but the Boston Common also houses a veritable community of ghosts.
Under the rule of the Puritans in the 18th Century, the park was used as an execution site for murderers, thieves, pirates, Quakers, alleged witches and other local accused criminals, guilty or otherwise.
The condemned were hung from a tree, which locals affectionately nicknamed the “Great Elm,” until 1769, when the tree was replaced by gallows. The last hanging on the Boston Common took place in 1817.
Although the condemned weren’t given official burials and were instead disposed of in the Charles River, their friends and families often snuck into the Common under the cover of night, cut the bodies down and buried them somewhere in the park, at the risk of their own lives.
This practice became so common that Holly Nadler, author of the book Ghosts of Boston Town, referred to the park as “one big anonymous burying ground.”
Unbeknownst to the general public, bodies steadily accumulated under the Common’s soil until 1895, during the construction of Boston’s first underground trolley station, at what is now the Boylston Street Green Line stop.
In his book Ghosts of Boston: Haunts of the Hub author Sam Baltrusis estimated that the excavation unearthed “between 900 and 1,100 bodies, buried in shallow graves beneath the Boylston Mall.”
As a result of this mass unburial, the Boylston Street station has gained a well-deserved reputation as Boston’s “ghost station.”
Passengers and T workers alike have observed spectres drifting along the subway tracks, and into the abandoned tunnels connecting Boylston Street with the South End.
The section of the Green line connecting Boylston station to Arlington station is considered particularly haunted and has become a sort of rite of passage amongst T operators, with veteran operators pointing out human-shaped clouds of mist to new recruits.
One particularly notorious spirit that haunts Boylston’s so-called ghost station is a British soldier in full redcoat regalia holding a musket, who appears in the middle of the tracks and glares menacingly at T passengers.
The operators of Boston’s ghost tours speculate that this unwelcoming spirit was one of the victims of an unjust hanging, and unable to rest, continuously revisits the site of his death.
Rationing the beauty
“This is New England, after all.
Though rippling foliage fills
the pane, the flush that tints the wall
will last a week or two, no more….’’
— From “North-Looking Room,’’ by Brad Leithauser (born 1953), American poet
Here’s the whole poem:
In spite of the news now
Dr. John Fogg donated the Dunlap Broadside to the Maine Historical Society.
— Photo Courtesy of Maine Historical Society
Excerpted and edited from a report by the New England Historical Society.
“As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, much has been shared of what seems absent from the commemoration. The media have noted time and again that Americans have not embraced the anniversary in the same way they did the Bicentennial in 1976. Given today’s global challenges and political divisions, that is perhaps not surprising. Still, communities across the country have found meaningful local ways to recognize the semiquincentennial.
“In Maine, the 204-year-old Maine Historical Society (MHS) set out to bring one of its most significant artifacts, an original broadside of the Declaration of Independence, to all 16 Maine counties. The society’s Dunlap Broadside is one of only 26 surviving copies printed in Philadelphia on the night of July 4, 1776. These broadsides were distributed throughout the colonies so citizens could read, or hear, the news that they were now part of a new nation.’’
Mapping the tumult of our time
From Kenneth Millington’s show “New Aftermaths,’’ at 3S Artspace, Portsmouth, N.H., through Nov. 29.
Mr. Millington’s artist statement:
“Kenneth Millington's paintings and drawings express an overarching interest in entropy, the universal tendency toward chaos and disorder, and forces of turbulence, disruption within flow and velocity. While these concepts naturally align with scientific investigation, the artist is interested in how they manifest in our technology, culture and stories. Entropy and turbulence are continually present in our collective histories, narratives and discoveries. His work isolates disruptions at varying levels to explore its nature as artifact, the material and methods of its expression and our symbolic language codifying it.
“As a tangible entry point to these concepts, Millington reworks the media of the comic book, with research based on his own childhood collection of 1980s and 90s comic books. Through the lens of the super-powered characters, the comics explore the human condition and societal issues forming modern-day myths. As with all myths, archetypes, challenges and consequences are present. Removing the heroes and villains leaves the aftermath of conflicts as a point of focus in the work. He collects and collages an array of random images combined with his own imagined objects. Many of these images depict destroyed spaces, collisions, explosions, debris fields and architectural remains. The result is a familiar space that has ruptured and dissolved into an entropic metaphysical landscape. These paintings and drawings map the tumult of our time and our fractured relationship to the natural world.’’
Chris Powell: Nothing will ever protect women as much as their own good sense
Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell, where a student was allegedly gang raped.
Sabrina Rubin Erdely, an American former journalist, in 2014 authored a defamatory article in Rolling Stone describing the alleged rape of a University of Virginia student by several fraternity members. The story was later discredited.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
From the beginning of time to the Rape of the Sabine Women at the founding of Rome right up to the present era of what calls itself higher education, predatory young men and scatterbrained young women always have had a talent for finding each other. Lately these same old circumstances are being framed as a national scandal, fueling more righteous posturing by the indignation industry.
Thousands of people are marching around wearing T-shirts or carrying signs emblazoned "I am Jane Doe." But they're not Jane Doe -- not even close. For they're sober.
Jane Doe is, of course, the student at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., who, according to the general account, got drunk at a bar two years ago, visited a friend at a fraternity house, drank more and took drugs with him there, and agreed to have sex with him and another man before more men joined in and she lost consciousness while she was being used. For a while she shrugged it off but eventually realized that it became rape once she lost consciousness and the ability to consent, even though she had consented at first.
So now she is suing some of the men she believes to have been her abusers and wants to press criminal charges after all, and the governor and attorney general of New York, enmeshed in election campaigns, want to signify their own righteousness. They and those protesting on Jane Doe's behalf are sure that everyone connected with the fraternity should be imprisoned. As the Queen of Hearts said, "Sentence first, verdict afterwards."
Proving criminality in situations that begin with consensual intimate contact is always difficult and tawdry, but it can be a lot easier when due process of law and the presumption of innocence are cast aside, as they are being cast aside here, with the accuser's identity being concealed while the accused are identified.
But determining criminal guilt isn't most important here. What's most important is to try to alter the behavior of the predators and scatterbrains.
Cornell University has gotten a clue, if belatedly. It has banned parties at fraternity houses for the remainder of the academic year, apparently presuming that it can enforce the new rule. The university will hire counselors to assist students who claim to have been assaulted. But it's not enough.
Cornell and all colleges and universities should simply prohibit on-campus fraternity houses, as some long have done, since giving young men their own enclosed playpen, with no independent supervision, liberates their predatory, mob, and criminal instincts. The 1978 movie Animal House, purportedly inspired by situations at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., was a hysterical parody of the excesses for which college fraternities long have been noted. What happened at Cornell was not funny.
And it's not just Cornell. Sexual assaults are common in college, and quite apart from fraternities. Connecticut's Hearst newspapers reported the other day that there were dozens of rape complaints last year at colleges in the state, with Yale University leading the list.
Unfortunately danger is part of growing up and learning how to be safe physically and emotionally. There is no learning without being at least bruised. But young women must understand that no one can protect them as well as they can protect themselves.
You can't blame people for being assaulted; blame for assaults belongs to the assaulters. But you can blame people for putting themselves at risk as Cornell's Jane Doe did disastrously. Any young woman in college who gets drunk and high and enters a fraternity house is begging for trouble. Any young woman in college who is sober and enters a fraternity house is asking for trouble.
But of course many people will not always know better. While the Jane Doe controversy was exploding in the United States, a young man in Britain did his own Jane Doe imitation. He climbed a fence at a wildlife park, tried socializing with the tiger on the other side, and was fatally mauled. He was as innocent as Jane Doe, and as foolish.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Philip K. Howard: When AI meets the red-tape state
It’s hard to find balance in the current storm. Global perils are getting hotter while America is getting weaker. Is our only choice MAGA or socialism? AI could disrupt everything. Trump’s daily impulsiveness underscores the sense that America has lost its keel.
The missing keel, I think, is human responsibility. Americans at all levels of society feel powerless to do what they think is right. Just follow the rules. Don’t be judgmental. Americans can’t fix what they know is broken, so they point fingers and reach for extremist solutions.
Taking responsibility requires authority to act on your best judgment—to always ask, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Trust is not required—just accountability, which requires empowering other people to act on their best judgment.
Better leaders can’t take America back to a culture of individual responsibility—until the red-tape state is replaced with simpler legal frameworks, such as the U.S. Constitution, that are activated by the judgment of people taking responsibility. Leadership is basically illegal in the massive tangle of red tape created since the 1960s. Common sense and morality are also illegal. Can you prove you complied? Might someone complain a decision violates their rights?
This emperor—the post-1960s red-tape state—has no clothes. It fails because it is designed to supplant human judgment with preset rules and objective proof. Law is everywhere. People on the ground are tied in legal knots. The cure is not an autocrat issuing diktats from on high, but returning to a legal framework that empowers people on the spot to take responsibility. The inability to modernize infrastructure, or run a school, or uphold moral values, are the direct results of an operating philosophy designed to avoid human judgment.
Enter AI. The legal geniuses from the 1960s must be celebrating in the afterlife: They finally have a tool that can make government automatic. No need for common sense, or tradeoffs, or value judgments. Big Brother has arrived. Is your paperwork in order?
But only the pitchfork industry will profit from applying AI automatically to the red-tape state. In this column for The Free Press, I argue that applying AI to billions of words of legal mandates will likely cause a revolution. Under the control of responsible officials, on the other hand, AI could dramatically enhance public performance.
Putting humans in charge requires scrapping the foundational premise of post-1960s government —that law should preempt human judgment. Just as the Progressive Movement finally dislodged the philosophy of laissez-faire, so too a new governing vision must dislodge the failed philosophy of legal micromanagement. The goal must be a renewed commitment to human responsibility—especially in an age of AI.
Philip K. Howard is chairman of Common Good, a nonprofit legal-and-regulatory-reform organization. He’s also a lawyer, New York civic leader, best-selling author (The Death of Common Sense, etc.) and photographer. His email address is pkinghoward@gmail.com
A time to reflect
“Waiting for the Hull (Mass.) Bus’’ (oil), by Robert Beaulieu, in the show “Transitions,’’ on the Plymouth (Mass.) Center for the Arts Web site.
UMass launches big ‘Future of Food’ program
The Connecticut River Valley near UMass Amherst. The valley is New England’s most important agricultural area, sometimes called the region’s “breadbasket’’.
— Photo by BenFrantzDale
Text edited from a New England Council (NEC) report
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst is launching a $120 million Future of Food initiative to address challenges facing the global food system, including climate change, sustainability, food safety and population growth. “The initiative will support new research facilities, interdisciplinary collaboration and faculty positions focused on the future of food and agriculture,’’ reports NEC, which goes on to report:
“The initiative includes plans for a new 36,000-square-foot Paul and Diana Manning Food Innovation Hub, which is expected to break ground in late 2027. The facility will include testing labs, kitchens, and collaborative research spaces. Faculty and external partners will study areas including food safety and security, nutrition, food processing, sustainable agriculture and food production.’’
UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier A. Reyes said:
“UMass Amherst—with the nation’s number-one programs in food science and agriculture sciences—is uniquely positioned to solve the biggest, most critical challenges facing the world’s food system and promote innovative and transformative solutions to capitalize on opportunities that benefit the common good.
“UMass is committed to supporting cutting-edge research, providing hands-on student training and fostering external partnerships to drive transformative solutions that strengthen climate-resilient agriculture, expand food equity and production, and create a healthier, more sustainable future of food for all.”
Manjot Kaur Sidhu: Leave those fallen leaves alone
From The Conversation (except picture above)
ORONO, Maine
Every autumn, homeowners and gardeners tend to engage in a familiar ritual. As trees shed their leaves, people drag out rakes, leaf blowers and lawn bags to strip their yards bare before winter arrives.
It is a tidy habit rooted in aesthetics, but ecologically, clearing away fallen leaves strips the very foundation of local ecosystems. Far from dead debris requiring disposal, this fallen foliage forms a dynamic layer and a biological interface that drives nutrient cycling and is essential for soil health and the environment, including biodiversity.
As a researcher of plant growth in yards and gardens, I would recommend leaving leaves on the ground. There, they can provide essential winter habitat for native pollinators – even in places that don’t have freezing temperatures. And they act as a nutrient-dense, natural mulch for the soil.
Here is the science behind why the first step of fall yard care could simply be doing less – along with practical ways to keep your yard looking neat while nourishing the ecosystem underneath.
A winter sanctuary for native pollinators
To understand why leaf litter matters, it helps to look closely at what happens beneath the surface as temperatures drop. While honeybees pass the winter in sheltered hives, the vast majority of North America’s native pollinators do not.
Up to 70% of native bee species, including many insects’ cocoons and larvae, nest in the ground. Fertilized queen bumblebees burrow just a few inches into the soil or hide under dense leaf mulch to survive the freezing months ahead, to lay eggs in the following spring.
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If bees and other pollinators are to return in the spring, they need somewhere to shelter in the winter. Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Raking, bagging and blowing leaves away destroys this crucial winter nursery.
Many other insects depend on the shelter of fallen foliage:
Moths and butterflies: Species such as the luna moth (Actias luna) and the Isabella tiger moth, whose caterpillar form is the woolly bear, spin cocoons or roll themselves directly inside fallen leaves. Raking or shredding those leaves destroys the next generation.
Fireflies: Adult fireflies lay eggs in moist soil, and their larvae spend up to two years hunting for their food, soft-bodied invertebrates under damp leaf litter. Raking deprives them of moisture and habitat.
Predatory ground beetles: These beneficial predators spend the winter under leaves, emerging in spring to feed on common garden pests such as aphids, slugs and mites.
Nature’s engineered soil insulator and fertilizer
In addition to being a shelter, fallen leaves are an evolved biological mechanism for nutrient cycling. Trees actively pump vital elements, including calcium, magnesium, potassium and nitrogen from deep subsoils, into their foliage. When autumn comes and leaves drop, these stored nutrients are deposited back into the soil.
Leaving leaves in place triggers fundamental ecological benefits.
A thick blanket of intact leaves acts as a natural insulator for the ground. Air pockets trapped between overlapping leaves moderate the soil temperature and slow heat transfer, buffering against the freeze-thaw cycles that heave soil, fracture plant roots and expose beneficial soil microbes to lethal cold. The intact leaf blanket also conserves moisture and prevents soil from drying out over the winter.
As fungi, earthworms and micro-arthropods digest fallen leaves through late fall and spring, they break down organic matter into a rich material called humus. This slow-release organic fertilizer boosts soil structure, improves water retention in sandy soils, and prevents erosion and runoff in heavy rains.
Decaying leaves feed beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. Those fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant and tree roots, helping the roots collect water and nutrients from the soil to nourish the plants above. A natural layer of leaves also suppresses spring weed seeds organically without needing synthetic chemical herbicides. And the moist, insulated microclimate under leaf litter is also critical for terrestrial amphibians, including frogs and salamanders, to survive freezing temperatures.
Leaves can also harbor ticks, but if you move them to places people don’t frequent, even in the warmer months, you can reduce the number of ticks in places with activity. David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
How to ‘leave the leaves’
Adopting a softer approach to fall cleanup does not mean your yard has to look completely untamed or that you have to risk killing your lawn. Here is how to balance suburban expectations with sound ecological science:
Move, don’t remove: Move the leaves from lawns and sidewalks, rake them into garden beds, around ornamental plants or into vegetable plots, using manual rakes or electric leaf blowers. Aim for a layer 2 to 3 inches deep. Leaving leaves in grassy areas can help ticks hide there too, but if you move the leaves to garden beds or spots that are used less, the ticks will be less likely to nest in the grass. Establishing pollinator zones on the property can also help reduce tick populations.
Skip the leaf shredder: Mowing over leaves with a mulching mower is better than sending them to landfills, but high-velocity mower blades still kill overwintering insect eggs, chrysalises and larvae. Leave leaves intact wherever possible in plant beds.
Wait for spring to clean up: Do not cut back hollow-stemmed perennials or clear leaf beds during early, warm spring days. Wait until temperatures consistently stay above 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) so overwintering bees and butterflies have time to safely emerge.
When you bag leaves for disposal and then buy commercial wood mulch or synthetic fertilizers in the spring, you are effectively paying a price for what your trees provided for free. By rethinking the cultural expectation of pristine autumn lawns, it’s possible to transform silent landscapes into vibrant habitat sanctuaries, simply by stepping back and allowing natural processes to take over.
Manjot Kaur Sidhu is an assistant extension professor of horticulture and ornamental horticulture specialist at the University of Maine.
Manjot Kaur Sidhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.