Leaves in Our Yard and Apples in Our House: A Continued Story

Almost a week ago I posted a picture of one of the trees in our front yard. If you remember, it was sporting some brilliant yellow tree plumage. This is the tree today:

And this is what I spent three hours doing on Saturday night:

Please notice how large those leaf piles are and the frequency with which they appear on our lawn. That tree meant business last week.

The two most prominent thoughts in my head while I was raking were, “This would be much more fun if we had some little toddlers running around,” and “From an ecological perspective, this is a colossal waste of time.” I am not comfortable with the American lawn ideal: the time and energy spent on growing and maintaining a perfect Kentucky bluegrass monoculture, the volume of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides poured onto lawns every year, and the carting away of grass clipping and leaves that in a ‘normal’ ecosystem would decompose right where they fell and fertilize the ground naturally. However, I haven’t done anything to change our lawn, and, frankly, I’m afraid of talking to our landlady about my feelings toward the lawn care required of us, so all my high and lofty thoughts are just that: thoughts.

In any case, despite the negative appearance of these leaf raking thoughts, my attitude while raking was pretty positive. I was enjoying the exercise after having sat in a conference all morning and afternoon, and I was hoping to have the whole yard raked and cleaned up before Husband came home, as a surprise. This was his weekend to work, which meant he only had one day off, which was Friday this week.

And on his one day off this week, his mind was also on fall-ish activities:

I was impressed. I’m still impressed, actually. And very, very excited to eat these or give them to other people so they can enjoy Husband’s superior pie-baking skills.

Because our freezer space is extremely limited, we called up an older couple in town that we have gotten to know and feel comfortable with to beg some freezer space from them. They were more than willing, so we walked over to their house on Saturday night to deliver our pies (after Husband got home from work and the leaf raking was done), and then sat and chatted for a while. This all made us feel very good about our community networking and friend-making skills.

Fall-ish activities are abounding right now, and I am trying my best to savor every minute of them. (Although, I am glad that the tree has dropped all of its leaves and the raking is mostly done.)