The falling leaves drift by the window

[austin_dern]

I went a long time not having to do any of the chores of home ownership since, well, I didn't own a home. From leaving high school I was in dormitories up to the point I moved into apartments of my own, and then when I moved back to my parents' place they had a homeowners association which took care of things like shoveling the driveway (if there was more than an inch of snow) or mowing the lawn or counting to see if there were cars left on the street overnight. When it comes to the tasks of keeping house, the most I've had to do in a long while has been taking out the trash.

bunny_hugger has been apologetic all autumn about our need to do at least one of them, though, the raking of leaves from the yard. Her parents came over to help with this, but the house is surrounded by about three divisions of trees, decorated with the Oak Leaf Cluster for dedication to dropping oak leaves, although the clearing out of the neighbor's yard left this year with a surprisingly low, according to everyone who's done this before, number of leaves out there. Anyway, she needn't have been so apologetic about it; after all, it's just leaves.

Although, yes, it is a lot of leaves. You know how when you're moving out of a place and you keep putting stuff into boxes and there's still as much stuff left in your drawers and closets as when you started? The leaves were pulling that trick, and more; some of the drifts in the garden actually grew as we raked them up, and I swear a leaf-drift over by the pond pointed at me and laughed. We were able to fill up ten leaf-and-yard-clutter bags and while that's unmistakably reduced the number of leaves in the yard, there's still quite a few left. What's there will be a nice base for the snowfall.

Trivia: Mississippi's state government spent a fifth of its revenues in 1866 on artificial limbs for Confederate veterans. Source: Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, And Put America On The Map, Stephen Yafa.

Currently Reading: A Billion Days Of Earth, Doris Piserchia.

The Music Goes Round And Round, carrying on just why last time we didn't actually get an infinitely long Buggles song.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Yes,. Momgoose's house is like that with the leaves. since she got a riding mowers he simply mows over all the leaves she can; the driveway's unique accumulation means some yet need be raked.

She was thrilled that Hurricane Sandy blew them all off onto someone else's lawn. It made three days of power loss a lot nicer.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hm. Well, the loss of power: was that accompanied by losing the hot water heater? That is, could she still shower and such? And were the burners in the kitchen still working? Three days without on those terms might not be too bad. (I suppose that the configuration of our backyard makes it nigh-impossible that anything short of a small tornado would sweep all the leaves up rather than just shuffle them around.)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

The hot Water heater also went; as did the burners on the electric stove in the kitchen. Toilet flushing had to be accomplished from water reserves, at that. The second day of power loss, she and two friends of hers came over to my house for dinner, showers, and cell phone charging.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hmm. No, I think I'd keep the power, then, and put up with raking the leaves. It wasn't that inconvenient.