I Told Bud I Was Writing A Blog About Leaves
When I told Bud I was going to write a blog about leaves this week he said, “Why because they are so annoying?” I had to laugh because that is exactly the reason why I decided to write about them!
All my life I’ve lived in the “city”, or what we in Maine would consider a city. I’ve never lived “outside of town.” So at most, as a child and as an adult, I’ve had around six leaf bearing trees in my yard at any given location. I like trees. In the spring their little buds of green give us hope that winter will finally break and it will start to warm up. In summer trees provide us with shade from the sunshine that we waited all winter to see but now for some reason complain about. In fall the bright colors of the trees, especially on the sugar maples, are breathtaking, and then they all fall off.
Like I said, I am a city girl, so six or so trees in my yard has never been a problem to clean up after. In fact, I’ve always looked forward to raking the leaves, Fall is my favorite season. A few years ago I took my leaf raking to a whole new level when I bought some use plastic leaf mitts. These are like rakes for your hands and they give you the ability to scoop up huge, and I mean huge, piles of leaves and place it into the composting bag. I even got a little stand for the bags, where you can clip the bag into the holder and it stands upright without assistance. You can bend over scoop up a huge handful of leaves and dump it right into the mouth of the bag that is being held wide open for you. Great system! Truly!
If you know me personally, or have picked up from reading this blog, I’m a bit particular when it comes to certain things. Like over the top particular in the way that I want things done. The raking of the leaves has always fallen into this category. I never hired anyone to rake my yard over the years. Just like I don’t hire anyone to mow my lawn. There are some things I just need to do myself because I’m so particular. I will say over the years, as I’ve gotten older, the prospect of having to go out into the yard in November and rake up the leaves has lost a bit of it’s magic. But it’s a chore that must be done and so I have always done it thoroughly. Seeing as I’m a city girl, and I only ever had six or so trees, I was the house in the neighborhood that was raked spotless. Not a single leaf was ever left scattered about my lawn. I’ve been known to even go out and hand pick up leaves that had the audacity to blow into my yard after I had raked up all of my own leaves. Year after year I went into the first few weeks of winter satisfied that I had gotten every leaf picked up from my yard.
And then I moved to the campground.
With fifty-five acres “outside of town” let me just tell you I have six trees within a six foot radius of my front door. This is not a city girl’s house. There are thousands and thousands of trees here. And it’s not just my own yard I have to clean up. With 130 camping sites that’s basically 130 yards that need to be raked. Trust me I’ve tried. It takes about one hour to rake a campsite. Do the math. There is. not enough time left between now and when the snow flies! Not to mention three playgrounds, three bathhouses, the mini golf, dog park and on and on. I have never seen so many leaves in my life! Don’t get me wrong, the Fall colors out here were stunning! But when all the leaves began to fall they piled up waist deep in some places!!
I quickly realized that my lifetime of leaf raking expertise was going to be put to the test!! Little did I understand.
Take the mini golf as an example. I took this picture this morning. I have raked this mini golf THREE times! Once even resorting to the leaf blower and blowing everything down over the bank where Bud then mowed over all of the leaves with the lawn mower to mulch them into tiny pieces. Three times I have cleaned up the leaves to my very particular standards, scooping up leaves and making sure there is not a speck of leaf to be seen. Only to find this mess the next time I turn around. The trees are bare! I don’t know where all of these leaves are coming from. Deeper in the woods I guess. Like little mice scurrying out from all of their hiding places they blow from deeper in the forest out into the open expanse of my new yard.
The reality is that I will never get them all. My city girl standards of having the cleanest, leaf free lawn in the neighborhood cannot be applied here. There are millions upon millions of leaves here! I am conceding defeat! I’ve come to a truce of sorts with the leaves.
To me the above picture is now my standard of a very nice clean yard! I look out my kitchen window at this and think “It’s looking pretty good out there!” If I can see more grass then leaves, then that’s well enough! They say to the path to happiness is learning to let things go. I agree with that. I’ve learned to let a lot of things fall away that I used to think were so important.
Leaves. You’re now on the list. I’m letting you go!