THOSE DAMN, PRETTY LEAVES

I’m not much of a fall person. Spring and summer are my times of year. I guess I’m not crazy about fall because I know winter is then just around the corner and I’m 'really' not a winter person. The only thing that gets me through winter is Purdue Basketball. (**See prior blog**)

But, for us Midwesterners, you can’t deny the beauty of the leaves this time of year. It is gorgeous to drive through the various colors of the rainbow…the bright reds, oranges, yellows and the greens still remaining. The contrast of the colors is beautiful.

The down side to all those beautiful leaves…is that they’re comin’ down…and most of them seem to be comin’ down...IN MY YARD!

Blocks away from us, are the new neighborhoods that were stripped of all vegetation before houses were then put up. House after house built side by side within feet of one another. There are no leaves collecting in their yards in the fall…because there are NO TREES in their yards.

Cindy & I have been blessed to have a nice home in an older, established neighborhood, with lots, and lots of trees. There are approximately 85 different types of trees in Indiana, according to the internet site I visited. We have 15 trees on our lot alone. Most are maple, but there are elm and crabapple among others. They vary in age from 20 years old (I assume, since it was about 5 foot tall when we moved to our current house 17 years ago) to probably 75 years. They range in height from 15 feet to probably 60 feet with some that look 40 foot wide. Some lose their leaves early and some hang on until late fall, even after the first snow has fallen.

Sunday, I performed my first ‘gutterectomy’ of the fall. (That’s when I climb up on the roof and clean the leaves and crud out of the gutters.) I probably do that 10-15 times a year. Half in the spring, when the little ‘whirligigs’ from the maple trees act like helicopters and dive for my gutters, and the other half in the fall when the leaves begin to drop.

Yesterday, I noticed my neighbor to the north had used his riding lawn mower to sweep his yard clean of leaves. It really looked nice. Really nice. I don’t use a rider, nor have a sweeper. No, it’s a good old fashioned rake for me. On a good day, I can rake my yard in about 90 minutes. But I don’t want to get too early of a start on raking leaves, because just one look up tells me there’s still a zillion more to fall. If I rake today, I’ll be unable to tell a difference tomorrow.

So, for a few more days anyway, I’ll just admire my neighbor’s yard.

Hey, if the wind helps me out, my leaves will end up in HIS yard anyway!!

Dan