Now that I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.0 for the iPhone, I might as well use it to post something.
Today was devoted to the leaves. We seem to have about twice as many trees in our backyard as anyone else in the neighorhood. Because I’m such a softy, and don’t require my daughters to help me with the raking and bagging, it falls to me alone to fill as many bags as I can as quickly as I can.
But first, it was time to get some lawn bags at the local Home Depot. I was a lot more focused on the task at hand than I usually am upon entering a home improvement store. It also helped that the front was filled with Christmas junk, which is the easiest thing in the world for me to avoid. However, it is not that way for everyone: I saw a family picking up a plastic tree. How do you countenance that whe it is seventy degrees outside, and not even the Fifteenth of November? I wish that I could report that the family seemed so full of Christmas cheer, that it was obvious why they were carting around a tree that won’t degrade for the next 150,000 years. But I cannot. The dad had a thousand-yard stare, and the boy was whining about not being able to help carry. Merry Christmas.
For those of us still living in the fall season, it was back to finding those elusive bags. Aha! There they are. Wait – those are the ones I want, but they’re clear. Who needs clear lawn bags? Are they for display purposes for your neighbors? To impress the trash pickup crew? To assure all and sundry that there are no body parts in that garbage can? Whatever. I will stick with the traditional opaque noir version with orange extendible handles.
Having blown the majority of the leaves into little russet continents a couple of days ago, what remained for me was to break out the leaf sucker. It being electric, it is not powerful enough to quickly pick up anything but the lightest of leaf-like objects. I ended up stopping after conquering North and South America, and wishing that I was a better Risk player.
Because our subdivision is full of rugged Libertarians, there is no street leaf sweeper. That would be too much like pinko-commie socialism. The residents with fewer trees would be constantly at my door, taking me to task like a welfare cheat. So, my replacement activity is stacking full leaf bags as high as my neighbors, so he doesn’t see me as a complete slacker. Fat chance.
It’s supposed to be generally dry this week, and 90% of the leaves are on the ground. I should be able to face the winter with confidence. Eek.
6 Comments
9 November, 2009 at 11:24 am
We use clear trash bags for recyclables. All our refuse is put at the curb in bags — no cans or other large containers. The guys come down the street and throw the bags into the truck and are gone in a flash — and no stinky empty container to lug back up to the garage. So simple and efficient.
The clear bags for recycling differentiate from the black for trash.
9 November, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Aha! Thanks, Ken. That makes complete sense.
9 November, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Now I feel bad that I made you rake our leaves down to the edge of the street. Unless you thought of it as practice…
9 November, 2009 at 10:03 pm
You should know better that to fight a far on two fronts. Those Russian leaves can be a real bear.
12 November, 2009 at 7:56 am
i love that this is in the “things I’ll start but never finish category”. I love that you have that category.
12 November, 2009 at 11:15 am
Although I consider myself a rugged Libertarian, I live in a town of pinko-commie socialists and thoroughly appreciate our leaf-sucking truck. Unfortunately due to our freak snow storm on October 15th, the crews have been preoccupied with excess brush pickup and haven’t yet collected leaves this fall. I got all excited when I saw the leaf sucker on my street the other day, ran into the garage to get a rake and move the piles which had drifted on to the grass back over the curb. The truck went down the opposite side of my street and never came back. Sigh.