Leaf Raking over the years

While I was outside today at 7:30 am raking leaves into bags I reminisced about my leaf and fall memories.  I don't remember raking any leaves in Colorado.  When we moved to Vermont and lived on Park street we loved the fall and leaves.  We raked them into piles and jumped in the piles.  We made entire houses and forts similar to snow forts out of them with very wide walls between the rooms.  Eventually we raked them to the curb and I think the town picked them up or maybe we burned them.  I cannot remember which.  Those leaves provided hours and hours of entertainment for the 6 and then 7 of us.  The smell in the fall brings me right back to 69 Park Street and playing in the front yard with the leaves.

My next big leaf memory is when we moved into our current house when Christopher was 12 years old and Bethany was 3 years old.  Our Arlington house had some leaves but not like this house.  We raked the leaves into a big pile and jumped in them and played in them and eventually bagged them.  I was probably recreating my childhood on Park Street but my kids played outside in the leaves, at least at that age.  Our first Christmas card in that house was them in a leaf pile.

Over the years, we became busy, and leaves became a chore.  There were lots of them, we were working full time, raising two wonderful children and even some graduate school thrown in there.  One year we dragged the leaves onto the boundary line between us and our neighbors.  That was the only complaint we heard from Dot and Neil, who otherwise were the best neighbors in the world.  Their granddaughter used that hill in the winter for sledding and he was upset that it would ruin her sled hill.  One year we dragged the leaves onto tarps, loaded both of our station wagons with the tarps and drove them to the DPW recycling pile.  This was my favorite method but it was a chunk of time we no longer have/had.

At a certain point we started hiring someone to clean up our leaves.  We threw money at it and a noisy machine arrived twice a year and blew our leaves away.  I am sorry to offend anyone including my husband, but I hate those blowy leaf machines.  They ruin the sounds and smell of fall and leaf raking.  Gasoline and noise are not what I think about for leaf raking.  This spring we decided to mow our own lawn and clear up our own leaves.   Rodney has done all of the mowing this year and we were able to keep ahead of it.  Fast forward to the fall and the leaves that are accumulating.

Rodney decided to sail to the Bahamas.  OK, he is sailing from Marathon, Florida to the Bahamas with my sister and brother-in-law helping them move their boat/home south.  Right now they are waiting for a weather window to make that sail and then he is headed home to do his part raking the leaves.  Hopefully the snow we are expecting will arrive after he is finished with his part of the raking.

SO in the meantime, I set a goal for myself of bagging two bag a day of leaves.  I enjoy it but it is a solo activity and I am not a solo person.  20 minutes is my tops for a solo activity.  That is why gardening is out, unless someone is there talking to me.

I thought of inviting someone to rake with me, and then I would rake with them at their house.  Any takers?

I admit it, I am stubborn and am not going to hire a landscaping company to spread noise and gasoline smell once again in our neighborhood.  Picking away at it by two bags a day will get the job done, and Rodney will return from the Bahamas to finish the task.