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Raleigh vacuumed up its last leaves this spring, switching in the fall to picking up bags and bins of leaves weekly. Despite constant urging from the city, many people stored their leaves in the street, sometimes for months, in growing piles. The vacuum trucks would come by twice each year, once before the first leaves fell and again after the leaf mountains had been ground into slippery mounds by cars and weather. You might think the City of Oaks would treasure its leaves as wildlife habitat, supporting invertebrates and birds. The fashion in my neighborhood is to scrub the land of fallen leaves and replace them with pine straw or mulch taken from other land.