Leaf Bagger

About Leaf Bagger

By the second week of October the scrub oak on the Alpine foothills has gone rust and wine, and shortly after that all of it ends up somewhere — mostly on somebody's lawn. Leaf Bagger exists for that stretch of the calendar: leaf removal, fall cleanup, the last mows of the year, and hauling off whatever the canyon wind has piled against the fences. There is real pleasure in the before-and-after, a yard buried at nine and bare green by noon, the grass breathing again before the cold arrives. The rest of the year the route is mowing, trimming and edging on the steady rhythm Alpine yards ask for. Alpine and the bench towns beside it, one autumn after another.