A 'few' of the leaves on my lawn
This week I’ve begun working in my yard; it may be good exercise but it is NOT fun. My front yard, back yard and side yards are jam-packed with leaves that fell last fall.
I should have raked them in October, gathered them up and deposited them into see-through garbage bags for the sanitation department to pick up and haul away, but I rarely ever do what I should. Leaf-raking is no exception.
So now I’m staring at huge mounds of leaves, covering not only the moss that grows on my property (instead of lovely green grass that most lawns boast), but my flower beds, too. And since Spring has arrived early in Atlantic Canada this year, I know that underneath the
Another view of leaves
carpet of soggy, moldy leaves there are plants trying their best to reach for the sun.
Plants deserve better than that, so I decided it was time to gather up the leaves and let the flowers and bushes pop their little heads out of the soil, shake off any remaining remnants of winter’s chilling frost, and grow into the mature plants they were meant to be.
If only it was as easy as I make it sound. Gather up the leaves, deposit them neatly into garbage/leaf bags and drag them to the curb to await pick-up.
Nothing is as easy as it sounds.
And another
For one thing, ‘gather up the leaves’ really means ‘don my gardening gloves, bend my back and lock my knees, and rake, rake, rake until I have huge piles of leaves scattered around my yard, then bend my back even more and scoop the leaves up with my hands and/or rake and stuff them into a bag’.
The leaves, mind you, don’t want to go quietly into the dark night; they stiffen up like a child who doesn’t want to be carried to bed, and they puff out their dried up veins until they are too big to squish into the now seemingly minuscule plastic bag. But I persevere.
I push and I push and I push, jamming those d*&$ leaves into the clear plastic bags until they succumb to their fate. It is not a happy time for any of us.
Now,several days later, I’ve still not managed to deposit all the leaves into their new containers. I’ve walked around my yard, I’ve picked up dead branches that blew off the trees in a February storm, I’ve made a trip to the local hardware store to buy a metal bag-holder so that I won’t have to contort my torso into gymnastic-like poses in order to pick up the leaves and deposit them into the garbage bags, and I’ve contemplated a future without millions of leaves in my yard. But I haven’t disposed of the leaves.
I will; I promise. One day soon, before this coming fall covers my lawn with an entire new crop of nature’s colorful dandruff.
Tiny crocuses...so happy to be rid of their leaf covering!
Today when I came home from my second trip to the golf driving range (see previous post Bruised and Battered) I meandered around my front yard, scouring the landscape for new signs of life after winter.
And guess what I found? Tiny crocuses, stretching their necks to the sun, happy and content to have shed their winter blanket of leaves and snow. I took their picture, a reminder for me that life can spring forth from seemingly barren earth, that perhaps it is worth my while to finish raking the leaves in my yard.
I can only hope to finish my leaf-raking before the dreaded mosquitoes also figure out that Spring has arrived early this year! Because once they realize that, they will once again take over my yard and I will have to disappear into my home to hide until fall arrives…and then, of course, I’ll have even MORE leaves to rake…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
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