Here come the leaves.  

It’s always interesting to me how long it takes for the leaves to fall off completely.  It’s also interesting to me how much my priorities have changed when it comes to my yard and how I’ve learned to find short cuts.

I knew a lady once who sat in her yard with an elaborate stick with a nail on the end of it. She’d get up periodically and stab leaves as they fell to the ground.

Fascinating and funny.

We were so excited to have our first yard in 1994 that I felt like I was always out there. I mowed twice a week and pulled my tiny electric weed eater out even more. As soon as the leaves hit the ground, I’d grab my mower and mulch up what I could, followed up by intense raking, bagging or heaping into the street for the fancy service the city has.

When kids came along, mowing and leaf raking took on a whole meaning and became a new outdoor adventure. 

Since the kids liked to be outside a lot of the time, it was a good reason to be out there with them, stopping the mower periodically to grab a drink and push someone on the swing, or pause long enough for some long jumps into gigantic piles of leaves.  

I remember the familiar “Dad, are you finished?” every time the mower was shut off, and I never quite understood if it was the noise of the mower that bothered the kids or the fact I was mowing and not playing.  

Maybe both.

By the time we moved into our third home, everyone had grown up enough that they could all pitch in.  We didn’t rake our yards as much as some other folks, but when we did, it was a family project and extremely thorough.  I was proud of the fact we almost had it down to a science and the grand raking of the leaves only happened two to four times a season.

By the time the Christmas lights were put up, we had the leaves piled near the curve for the magic truck to come around and make them disappear.

Now we are in our fourth and hopefully last home where there is a lovely field, a picket fence and a few well-placed trees in the mix. Somehow, the leaves are prettier and less stressful these days, and my psyche is not troubled by the blanketing of the leaves over the yard as the colors pop out.  I pull out of the driveway and enjoy the look of my yard – even though a small part of me knows that raking and gathering is something in my near future.  

But somehow it all seems easier. We put tarps down in the yard and use the blower or rake to get the leaves to the tarp in an efficient manner. The tarp is taken off to an undisclosed and far away location where the leaves will use their powers for good.  

After the front yard is done, we move on to the back yard. Leaves are raked out of dormant flowerbeds and coaxed out of the corners and crevices of the house. Once out in the yard, the leaf blower gathers them up into separate corners of the picket fence where they are easily carted off using the covert tarp mission.

I’ve timed it. Altogether, the whole process takes under 90 minutes, especially if it’s a family effort, which thankfully still happens if the planets are aligned.

And yes, someone will invariably still jump into a pile. It’s pretty much a given.

You realize how old you are and  how humdrum your life may be when you write a couple of pages about the evolution of your leaf-raking priorities.   

Maybe some of you will share in my enthusiasm. 

And heck, if you have any tips for me to make it under my 90 minutes, shoot me an email at marksremarks10@gmail.com.