I had the bright idea that I wanted to do something outside and that something was to rake leaves. Believe it or not, at my age, I have never raked leaves before. Until I moved into this house, I always had lived in an apartment, so there were no leaves that I had to rake. Since moving into this, my first house, I just never got around to raking. I always traveled a lot with work and when you're only home on the weekends, the last thing I wanted to do was yard work.
So, Friday was the day. I went into the garage and grabbed the broom and the rake. (By the way, Ron must have bought the rake because I never bought one!) I looked all over the rake for instructions, but believe it or not, there were none. I'm a half way intelligent person, I should be able to figure this out, right?
I started in the driveway. Keep in mind, on the side of the driveway is my neighbor's chestnut tree that is dropping leaves by the second. I started with the broom trying to brush all of the leaves towards the front lawn. For someone with a case of CDO, or obsessive compulsive disorder, but in alphabetical order, the way it should be, raking leaves when the wind is blowing is probably not a good idea.
I finally figured out that it's not like vacuuming. I can go over and over the same spot as many times as I want and it will NEVER be free of leaves. The damn things just keep coming and coming and if they are not freshly dropped from the trees, the freakin' wind is f*ing with me and just depositing them right back in my driveway from the piles I just swept together. This is just SO wrong.
Case is point is this little hole by the gas meter. It was a smaller hole, but the gas company enlarged it for free when they replaced our faulty riser just a few weeks ago. Supposedly they are to come back and replace the piece of concrete they cut out, but they said maybe in the spring. Yeah, right. But, I digress.
I worked hard at getting all of the leaves out of this little hole and believe me, there were a ton of them. Now look. WTF? Once I rake, it should stay raked, right??
Now, on to the front lawn.
In our area, it seems that people don't bag up their leaves. They create huge piles of leaves by the curb and a big truck comes by and has this huge hose and they suck the leaves up into the truck. Ok, remember, first time home owner. This is still all new to me, so if you've ever heard of this before, you have one up on me. I thought this was an awesome idea.
Anyway, that was my goal. I was going to rake all of my leaves into piles by the curb and hope the truck was going to come by my house one of these days to suck up all of my leaves. I was so proud of myself. I had four piles, all about knee high, over by the curb.
Then Friday night we really had a wind storm go through here. That can sure mess up the feng shui of your leaf piles. As of this morning, here is what is left. For real!
And, if you look to the right of the tree lawn to the front yard, there are more leaves on my grass! C'mon now! Again, this does not go well with my CDO.
So what was the outcome of all of this? I really over did it Friday and my back has definitely been protesting. I mean it protests no matter what I do but this was really over doing it. I have spent most of my time since raking laying on the couch trying not to move while pumping in the Aleve. I should have known better.
But to be honest, I did have fun Friday. It was great to be outside in the warm weather and it was great to get the feeling that I was actually accomplishing something in between my fits of redoing the same patch of driveway or grass over and over and over again. And, for a little while, I was really proud of what I accomplished.
Today while I was outside taking pictures, I think I solved the mystery. The mystery of how my yard could go from piles of leaves to looking like this.
I think my leaves all blew across the street to this neighbor's. I hope they enjoy them as much as I did!
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