Unfortunately.
We have four trees in our front yard. Two Aspens, one Maple (not sure which genus), and a huge Mulberry (at least I think it's a Mulberry - I could be totally wrong. I got a C in Biology - and I was pretty proud that it wasn't a D). Anyway, the Aspens and Maple are smaller and their leaves seem to drop off pretty early in the season, making the fall leaf clean up a pretty painless process. The Mulberry (if that's what it is) is another story. It's a big tree (I would estimate it to be about 40 feet tall) and it holds an incredible amount of leaves, and it also holds on to those leaves until fairly late in the season - or so it seems to me. (Remember, I got a C in Biology so it might be a normal amount of time and I just like to complain.)
Regardless of when they fall, I still need to rake and pile and put all of those leaves into bags. There's really no use in complaining. It's just a fact of life.
So that's what I did this morning. I raked leaves. Many leaves. Many, many leaves. It's a good thing I had help.
Audrey was a good sport about leaf clean up. I was actually worried that I wouldn't be able to do much before she got bored or bugged - but she did well. I raked as fast as I could; and I piled as fast as I could; and I bagged the leaves as fast as I could. And Audrey... well, she didn't really help much. In fact, there were times she was taking handfuls of my carefully raked piles of leaves and - gasp! - throwing them everywhere! It was ok though because it kept her entertained long enough for me to continue raking and piling elsewhere (plus the wind was already doing it's work of blowing the leaves everywhere anyway).
Audrey kept busy with:
1. throwing leaves all over the place,
2. running through the big piles of leaves,
3. throwing Maple seeds (you know, the things that look like helicopter blades) up in the air,
4. taking her sweatshirt off,
5. taking her shoes off,
and
6. taking her socks off.
(I was really excited about the last three activities on her list, in case you were wondering. Thankfully it wasn't too cold.)
After all that running and undressing, she took a quiet moment to reflect and meditate on life:
That's a small ceramic turtle she's sitting on. I think she does her best thinking on that turtle. (Actually, I'm not sure what it's made of - I don't think it is ceramic, but it's not made of wood or metal or ice, and I don't think it's plastic... so what does that leave? Oh well.)
Anyway....
Meanwhile, I kept raking and bagging leaves.
The good news? We bagged seven big bags worth of leaves.
That works out to be approximately 76,928 leaves. At least that's about where I lost count.
And Luke was too busy swinging and sucking on his hand to help me keep track. So we'll never know, for sure, what the actual number was.
And the bad news?
Do you think you can handle it?
(I'm not even sure I can handle it....)
There are still many, many, many, many, many, many leaves that still need to fall off the tree! Anyone want to make a wager on how many bags - total - it will take this year? (Anything to make the clean up more interesting!)
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