The council planted trees along our road about 10 years ago. Since the weather has been dry for the last couple of days, we went out and swept up the dry leaves at the front of our house and filled 3 bags. Our neighbour came out and started sweeping up the ones at the front of his house. He asked if we were going to have a bonfire, like him. I thought the leaves were actually too damp to do more than smoke but I have other plans for them. We have very heavy clay soil and a couple of wet days sees the hens literally paddling in liquid mud. A couple of bags of leaves in the run helps to keep their feet a bit dryer. They love picking through the leaves in case any tasty tidbits lurking there and by the time they are finished with them, the leaves are no more than a pile of crumbs. Then we put the leaf crumbs in the compost heap where they finish breaking down and end up helping to grow our veg. My neighbour said that we could have his leaves too and as his far side neighbour came out just then, they said we could sweep their front for them too.

There is a slight gap in the houses opposite us but lots of trees in the pavement, so we started gathering leaves there too. Both neighbours on the far side of us came out of their houses, saw what we were doing and indicated that we could sweep the leaves from the front of their houses too. They were actually joking and were quite taken aback when we said we wanted them. So we ended up with 15 absolutely overflowing sacks of leaves... and a great desire to sit down for a bit with a cuppa. And there is a long swept area of pavement in our road with no leaves. And a lot of happy householders who didn't have to sweep up.