All in a Days Work

It seems every unplanned moment is spent raking leaves at this time of year. They keep falling until I'm convinced they will never end. Jon and I have spent the last two Sundays outdoors, moving mountains of brown, yellow, and orange leaves with rakes and leaf blowers and we now have heaps taller than me waiting at the curb until next week when the city will pick them up. And that's only the front lawn. On my last count of the backyard we have thirteen large tulip trees that drop almost more leaves than we can bare each fall, but luckily, we get to push them all over the edge of our massive, tree studded ravine. I consider this my way of giving back to nature.

Sometimes I gripe about how we could still be renting and our landlord could be taking care of the yard work, or how there are people that we could pay to do this stuff for us, but mostly I like getting dirty and playing in the leaves like a little kid again. Not to mention there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in doing it ourselves. It is yet another one of those times that Jon and I are able to look at the finished product and then at each other with a smile and a nod that says "Yeah, we did that as a team, and we did a fine job. Nothing can stop us now."