Mulch more

Adapted from an item in Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24. com

November seems a good month to sleep in. The nights are long and the major colors outside are brown and gray. There are, it it true, a couple of holidays – Veterans Day (which we used to call Armistice Day, after the armistice that ended World War 1 – aka “The War to End War,’’ followed a couple of decades later by the worst war in history) and Thanksgiving, whose inconvenient placement on the last Thursday of the month tends to make it rather low key. I’ve long been impressed by the masochism of those traveling then. Then the Christmas/New Year’s mania sets in, with more travel masochism.\

Meanwhile, if you have a yard, resist the temptation to remove all those fallen leaves, leaving the ground looking like a putting green. Fallen leaves are good for the soil and the overall ecosystem. Mulching the leaves and spreading the result is particularly admirable. And yes, there are nonpolluting and fairly quiet electric mulchers. You can  also put some  lime on the leaves, mulched or not. This helps  make  such nutrients as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and calcium more available to plants when the growing season resumes.

All this is good therapy for dealing with the political and cultural squalor that slob America has soaked itself in.