Tuesday, November 07, 2006

The great leaf debate

Last weekend, we attacked the leaves that have been collecting on our lawn. Well, actually, I attacked the leaves with some enthusiasm while Russ cursed. Everything. The leaves, the trees for having so many leaves, the wind for shaking down the leaves, the quarter acre lot our house sits on for collecting so many leaves.....(Keep in mind the poor man was sick, but he honestly wasn't outside for more than an hour, while I spent considerably more time raking and hauling. Actually, he only came outside after I started using his brand new toy...er...leaf blower. Presumably he was checking on me to see how it was going--it wasn't--and ended up taking over and using the leaf blower himself. Which I happily gave up for my good old fashioned, wooden rake.)
At one point while raking, in an effort to distract him, I started asking him his opinion on the leaf debate: do you rake a few weekends in a row, collecting the leaves that have fallen, or wait until all the leaves all fall before doing one huge raking session. He was too miserable and cold at that point to really participate though so I never got a clear cut answer. I brought the question up at school and half of my male colleagues (that would be two men, I do after all work in an elementary school!) thought you should rake a few weekends in a row.
After the ordeal we went through last weekend (there are, no joke, mountains of leaves threatening, with one swift gust of wind, to come through the barbed wire fence onto our yard again) I'm inclined to agree with them.
And the worst part is, we still aren't even halfway done with raking our yard, so we'll be out there again this weekend. Raking and hauling. Hauling and raking.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It does seem like a never-ending battle doesn't it? Remember how I wrote about helping my Dad last weekend? He's back at it again today...despite the fact that he got the lawn spotless last Sunday.
(and I have to admit I was much more interested in spending time at the barn with Derby than volunteering to help him this time! Bad daughter!)

Anonymous said...

Greg's way of dealing with the leave problem is two fold:
1. cut down all the trees.
2. any leaves blowing into our yard: buy a lawnmower with a leaf mulcher attachment.
I don't think that would work at your house though.
Next time you have a big pile, let us know; Juliette and Cosette would love to jump in it. That would at least bring a smile to your face! Course, then we'd have to re-rake the leaves into a pile...