I Hate Leaves

It is an unavoidable nuisance of autumn, having to rake leaves.  And luckily for me, my trees don't drop their leaves at the same time.  The maple tree closest to the house in the backyard starts dropping them about the second week of October, and the one closest to the fence about a week later.  And they usually drop for about a week.  That doesn't include the tress in the front yard near the street.

This year we are about a week later than usual.  I got all the leaves up from the first tree the week before Halloween and I was just waiting for the leaves from the big tree in back to fall.  Then came the rain and wind on Halloween.  It knocked half the leaves off in the backyard and all the leaves in the front were falling and blown around. Of course the village came around to collect leaves on November 1st, when no one had their leaves raked up from the rain that came through on Halloween.  So of course everyone raked them into the street the next day or two when it was dry, me included.  

Over the course of the week, we had even more fall so to help me out, Sarah and Kris raked the yard on Friday when she was home from school, so most everything was in the street when I got home on Friday night.  Then Saturday we had more rain and winds gusting to 30-35 mph.  It was like they never raked at all, and to make things worse, it was like all the leaves up and down the street ended up in my yard.  In fact, there were no piles of leaves left on the opposite side of the street.  

So I ended up spending three hours on Sunday re-raking and using the yard vac to get them all up again and back into the street.  As a result, I missed the first half of the Packers game vs. the Eagles, though I didn't miss anything.  So now I have the biggest piles of leaves on the block in front of my house. The pile is about 15 feet long and 3 and a half feet high. I am not sure when the village is going to be collecting them again, but tomorrow and Thursday it is supposed to be rainy and windy, which means there is at least a 50-50 chance that they'll be all over my yard again.  Of course, the village will come collecting them the day after.  With any luck it'll be so cold that they'll be frozen and the wind won't move them.