Will You Welcome Fall with a Sign or a Rake?

We put up a “Welcome Fall” sign and millions of leaves dropped into our yard. It looked like they were here to stay.

They wanted a cozy place to rest but we aren’t running a bed and breakfast. We don’t want the leaves here. So how to get rid of them? My wife solved the problem easily – “get out and rake,” she said. There was no mention of doing it together or having the kids help. I was in this mess alone, there is an “I” in our team – I was it.

Gone were my visions of pleasant weather, beautiful scenery and cider and donuts. The family would enjoy those while I suffered by chasing renegade leaves through a haze of dust or in rain laced with sleet. Leaves are supposed to be the heroes of fall but it seemed they were trying to ruin the season. Creating work for me was one way to do it.

My wife told me to rake. I told her I would not. I had God on my side. In the Bible He promises “dust to dust” – the leaves would turn to dust so raking was not necessary. My wife said I’d meet my maker sooner than expected.

Undeterred I held onto faith, I knew those leaves would return to dust. All it’d take was a tool heaven-sent to me – the lawnmower. Run it over the leaves a few times to grind them to bits. Caution when wet, though, as these pieces can get slippery enough to cause killer falls.

Soon leaf fall is so heavy the lawnmower trick doesn’t work. You have to rake, but where are the rakes? You don’t know. They’re not stored in a clearly visible, easily accessible location – it’s not like they’re fire extinguishers. You don’t really want to find them, they can be part of your estate someday.

Lost rakes are easy to replace. Every store always seems to have them on sale and on display. You can’t escape them. There’s a model for every budget, every skill level and even every fashion sense from spartan to bougie. The kind you want is a cheap one that breaks easily and quickly so it looks like you’re working hard but you’re not.

The most embarrassing day this fall will be when you stride into the yard carrying your rake aloft like Don Quixote held his lance askew. The neighbors will see this and think “What an idiot. Why is he raking now? There’s still some leaves on the trees.”

You get two things from raking – body aches and huge piles of leaves. To get rid of both requires a mix of booze and fire. If you’re a kid at heart do something fun. Douse the leaves with alcohol, drop a match and whoosh – you’re toast. Instant Chinese lanterns and ashes. Ashes to ashes – there’s something poetic about that. If the flames burn low, add s’mores to fuel the fire.

Sometimes the family wants to enjoy the leaf piles before you get rid of them. Kids love to jump in scattering things everywhere. Dogs love to run through the piles or get lost in them. The other day a pile was moving suspiciously, bulging out here and there. 

I wasn’t going to just reach in and maybe grab a snake, skunk or child. Instead I beat the leaves until the rake handle broke and all  movement stopped. I bagged the leaves and brought them to the curb. The next morning my wife asked where the dog was. Nobody knew. I wondered about the leaf bags but they were gone. Never did find the dog.

Unlike rakes, stores never carry enough leaf bags so they stock and price them out of reach of most people. These bags have a clever design flaw – the more you struggle to open them, the more they rip. Eventually they convert from a paper bag to a large sheet of paper flapping in the wind. 

Nobody knows what is the capacity of leaf bags. Best guess is not enough. Sure you can always cram in more leaves and stomp them down. You can even stomp and repeat a couple times. After that you roll the dice, either you get some more leaves in or “craps” your feet go through the bag. Game over and you get to rake the leaves in again.

You can fit many more wet leaves in a bag than dry ones. Fill the bag two to four feet deep with leaves and you’ll find the bag’s capacity isn’t as important as yours. When you give the leaves the ole heave-ho it might turn into a heave-oh-my-back. Don’t complain you can’t stand straight afterwards as such a story won’t get much traction.

Your city might say just bag the leaf bag idea. Rake your leaves into the the street. They got this idea from watching neighbors rake leaves into each others’ yards. Raking leaves into the street can cause parking problems – it messes up the odd/even day ordinances some people obey. Chaos ensues and your leaves will might get blown into the odd neighbors’ yards. On even days, they’ll get even.

As I reflect on fall I think of all the work, body aches, unpleasant weather, family and neighborhood grief it causes. I smile sadly and decide we won’t put the Welcome Fall sign up again next year.

 

 

Photo: Pexels – Margerretta.