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Raking Leaves

© Barbara M. Martin

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Raking raking raking.

If you live on the edge of the woods, I suppose raking leaves is to be expected. Especially if the dominant tree species are deciduous. (Ours are mainly oak, acres and acres of them.) I hoped the blustery fall winds would remove the leaves for us, polish the lawn clean and tease the lingerers out of the shrubbery, but so far no luck. What the wind takes away ... it also flings back at you. So that tactic did not work.

Mowing

Then I hoped the final lawn mowing of the season would do the job. It helped; it left little crinkly shreds of leaves all over the lawn instead of that big fat blanketing layer.

But then our buddy the wind acted up again and well, it was hard to tell they had ever been touched by human hand or mower blade or whatever. The acorns were still there, too, ready to make us slip and slide and sprain an ankle in no time flat.

Blowing

Last fall, in an inspired moment I dragged home an electric leaf blower that can double as a bagger and shredder. That thing is fantastic and almost sinfully fun to operate.

It swallows the leaves in a big loud whoosh and chomps them into bits, almost immediately you are ready to empty the sack into the compost pile or the leaf dump or use it as a fine mulch. Then again, and again, and again.

Unfortunately, in my country garden, there are more leaves than even I have enthusiasm to chomp one bag at a time -- and there is a limit to how many hundreds of feet of electrical cord I can safely string together.

SOS

Best intentions will take us all kind of places, but to make a long story short it kept raining on my free days, then a short-lived snow covered the ground for a fleeting prelude to the real thing in a month or so. Today we brought out the mower for one last attempt at lawn clearing, and the obstinate thing refused to turn over.

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