Tis the season for mulch

well its that time of season already, leaves are falling and I am ready to harvest me some free mulching materials.
This was just an example of getting my hands on either whole or chopped up leaves from the downtown park, and let me tell ya, sycamore trees seems to produce mountains on leaves every year.
when I was using the chopped leaves in my mulch pit experiment the result 3 months later was a very dark soft fine gritty compost like substance.