No picture = it never happened, eh!
Looks like mine after a good wind. Pic no use as I cleaned it up several days ago. 
How long does it take to clean up that mess?
Sorry to jump in , but that looks like it would be good to simulate sugar cane loads .
Mike
sw
Steve Featherkile said:
How long does it take to clean up that mess?
Usually about six to eight hours - with coffee breaks. 
It will take longer this time, I’m picking up the needles, getting rid of grass and weeds and then put in the desert tan crusher. In the hope that come Spring the greens will stay out of the crusher, if not it’s straight to the Round-Up.
BTW I hadn’t checked the St.Blasius pond for two weeks. The water level was submersing the inflow pipe, the algae had created a weir across the outflow. Great pleasure to get all that crud out with the short hand rake - algae, needles, the whole mess in two swoops.
PS SWMBO delivers the needles to a friend in Vancouver in 127 liter leaf bags, apparently it makes good mulch on walkways.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Try a controlled burn. 
Wow, what a mess!
Dwayne Weyrich said:
Try a controlled burn.
Yeah, that would go over well. 
For the Park (out our back gate) there’s still a “Please no smoking. Extreme fire danger!” advisory. But it is cooling down and before we know it will be snowing up on the mountains and rain in the Valley.
If I remember correctly one year we started XC skiing the third week of October - most people have a pair of “rock skis” for that early start.
@ Matt
Got some cleaned up and the crusher is in place, more needles already on that.
I find pine needles easier to blow away than leaves. The needles seem to go in bunches and in one direction. Leaves have a mind of their own.
HJ,
Time for me to get the wax out as well. I’m not lucky enough to have a pair of rock skis… Maybe someday. 
I was skiing this winter right up to April! Now that I’ve move to southern Idaho, I’ve got to find some new ski trails. The school I work at is about 20 minutes from some hills that I think should get plenty of snow in the winter. Early morning ski before school? 
Good luck on the needles!
Dan Padova said:
I find pine needles easier to blow away than leaves. The needles seem to go in bunches and in one direction. Leaves have a mind of their own.
Don’t have a blower, don’t want a blower.
Ponderosa needles are bunched in threes, they hang up on anything and we haven’t got them sufficiently trained to conform to one direction.
So it just means extra work, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Ill take the needles any day over the 4 sugar maple trees that I have. Once the leaves start falling you wont see anything but roof tops. Luckly I only have to deal with it for a few weeks in oct.
Mike Morgan said:
Sorry to jump in , but that looks like it would be good to simulate sugar cane loads .
Mike
sw
Mike, I think you’ve found the silver lining to this. Might have to be O scale for them to scale out though. But I’m ready to go to Hawaii and do some research! Alwaws thought it would be neat to model a sugar cane railroad.
Good luck with clean up HJ, sometimes we get a crumblier cookie than normal.
Randy Lehrian Jr. said:
…
Good luck with clean up HJ, sometimes we get a crumblier cookie than normal.
You’ve got that right Randy. The bigger the cookie, the more crumbs there will be. It’s all part of living in “Paradise”, where we also have snakes and plenty of apple trees. (http://rhb-grischun.ca/phpBB3/images/smilies/4.gif)
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
Dan Padova said:
I find pine needles easier to blow away than leaves. The needles seem to go in bunches and in one direction. Leaves have a mind of their own.
Don’t have a blower, don’t want a blower.
Ponderosa needles are bunched in threes, they hang up on anything and we haven’t got them sufficiently trained to conform to one direction.
So it just means extra work, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Ah ha! I see that Ponderosa pine needles are quite large, and as you mentioned seem to stay together, in their grouping, even as the fall. We have White Pines. The needles are smaller and as they fall separate, for the most part.
They do make good mulch however and garden suppliers actually sell them for that purpose. Maybe you could earn a few pennies. Invite people to see your railway for the fee of taking needles away with them. LOL
Dan Padova said:
…
Maybe you could earn a few pennies. Invite people to see your railway for the fee of taking needles away with them. LOL
SWMBO is in charge of that department i.e. organizing the garden tour(s) as soon as things are up to “garden tour standards”.
We could get smaller, transparent bags and … even export to Vancouver.
We’ve had a bumper crop of Ponderosa pine needles this year. I’ve managed to keep them off the layout, but elsewhere, they are two inches deep. The mulching mower only does so much. Fortunately, I can still burn because of the silvaculture rules, but I have to wait until the moisture content goes up a bit. Don’t want an errant ember sparking a fire.
Eeek.
Been there done that
Although your needles appear longer and softer then our Ponderosas. I’m guessing yours get more water then ours based on the other landscaping you have. I assume you have to occasionally water…although Canada is much wetter then us. But that added irrigation will make the needles softer.
Our needles are dry and sharp. Ouch. And the pine cones are even sharper. Double ouch.
My next door neighbor had several very large pine trees along the side of their yard at the property line. When the Santa Ana winds would blow all of their needles would find their way into my pool lying directly downwind, and I would literally skim out two full trash cans of needles from the pool after a Santa Ana event.
Then one time they had some “tree trimmers” come in to “clean up” the pines. The trimmers did such a poor job that all of these trees died and had to be removed. That was one of the happiest days of my life.