Thanks all, I thought if they provided something useful to the soil/plants, like iron, after broken down, it might make sense to leave them. But as kimmq mentioned, they wouldn't provide the right kind of stuff anyway. I think they were steel, about 2", but not sure. And now that I think about iron too, cast iron type tub comes to mind... I guess I need to refresh my memory on chemistry a bit - probably no iron in those staples, but that's just an un-educated guess. So I had only put the piles of compost in the center, and was able to go around and easily pull out the staples. Covered in compost and mulch now, so it's all good, and I have a clearer mind that there won't be rusty staples out there for me, my pooch, or others to step on in the future because of me. But I do feel like a dufus... I had this big accumulation of cardboard boxes in my garage that just kept growing larger. Hated to put them in the recycling bin because I might need them to ship something in sometime. And I was initially buying newspaper, then postal shipping paper, then Home Depot rolls of construction paper(?) to put down before the compost and mulch. Then the light bulb went on, and it must be one of those low level solar lights in the yard that are too dim, and last too short a time :-)... Hmmm, why don't I use those boxes instead? For what I was spending on newspaper and construction paper and shipping paper, I can use the boxes instead, and if I need a box sometime, I've saved enough to splurge and buy one :-)

I have found, and read, that onions will sprout less bulb and more green the deeper it is planted. I grew long-day onions last year and harvested some 2" - 2 1/2" onions. The previous year when I had them a bit deeper, they were all greens and scarcely any bulb. The caution of rot is a good idea in that we have had a lot more rain this year than in others. I will pull away the clippings and let things dru out a bit.

Chopped leaves are mulch so it really dos not make much difference in which order you lay down the different materials. However, wood chips on top of lighter material such as those chopped leaves would help hold them in place from the winds you may have blow through. That your mulch is all gone by the following fall means the soil has a very active Soil Food Web that is digesting the material, not that your neighbor is stealing any.

Just an aside but hummus is a Middle Eastern dish made of mashed chickpeas. Humus is the organic matter residual after decomposition of plant material :-)