Raking

There are some good things and some bad things about having a large garden.  Beauty hath no pain, and raking can be a pain.

 So what do you think about when you are raking up the huge pile of leaves that has fallen from a black walnut tree?  You think about the times that you and your children, who are now 28 and almost 32, piled up and jumped into piles of Fall leaves.

This was taken in the Fall of 1983.  Kids just love to help out.

 

I think about corn stalks and pumpkins on the front porch.

 

I look at the red leaf maple that was green all summer long and is now a scarlet red, as I return from taking the sheet full of leaves out back.

 I wonder is it worth having a black walnut in my garden? The leaves have very long and coarse stems that have to be picked up.

 

I'm glad that my knees work well enough at this point, so that I can push all of these leaves on to a sheet and then,

gathering the four corners up and twisting them together,  I can walk out to the back- back.

Fortunately, even in suburbia, there can be a rough section out in the back of the garden where you can fling the sheet and drop the leaves into nice piles.  Later this becomes black gold compost for planting other shrubs in the future.

 

You think how lucky that there have been several 70 degree days in November, giving you the grace and opportunity to  put the garden to sleep. This is a wonderful thermometer that I got at a church thrift store and is on the side of my house where I can read it from inside.  When I took this picture it was in the shade.

I think about how heavy the top of this birdbath was when I tipped it over so that it would not freeze and crack this winter,

about the woodpile next to the back door that is there, just in case something happens to the furnace, even though it does look pretty ugly.

I think how clever and resourceful my friend Rich was to think of recycling old cast iron window weights and use them to tie down the tarps on the woodpiles,

how the cast iron urn needed to be taken apart and turned upside down, 

 how the twigs that I have piled out back are probably dens for opossums, raccoons, squirrels,and rabbits.  Maybe their footprints will show up this winter in the snow.

How quickly the lawn on this side was done!