Leaf Control, Out of Control
Having two big trees in the backyard is great. They provide lots of wonderful shade for the yard, they are beautiful, they are home to many woodland creatures. But when fall comes, the leaves fall as well. In huge, massive, blankets of leaves. Tumbling down by the second, covering my yard in a thick layer of leaf.

Saturday was the one opportunity I had to take care of the leaf situation. To exercise some leaf control. It was warm out, I had to be home to wait for the cable guy, anyway. Perfect opportunity to tackle the leaf problem.

Of course, it was also the windiest day of the century, which only compounded the situation. What was once a fun idea as a kid, to rake up big piles of leaves, then jump in them and crunch around through the leaves for awhile, turned into a nightmarish job of chasing leaves around the yard while trying to scoop them up faster than they would blow into another section of the yard.

I thought about giving up, but this is the one day I had available to remedy the leaf plague. It had to be done, despite the tornadic winds. I had no choice.

I decided to mow the leaves, instead of rake, using my mulching lawn mower. I'd heard that shredded leaves are great for mulch, so my plan was to mulch the leaves into the lawnmower bag, then dump the shredded leaves out on my flower beds and around my plants. This seemed like a time saving plan, also saving me the hassle of bagging and hauling around big bags of leaves. Plus, it was an earth friendly plan. Even though the earth and winds were not being very friendly to me at the moment, I decided to be friendly, anyway. I'm such a giver.

So, I began to mow. After just one or two laps across the yard, I could see grass again where leaves used to cover the ground! I also noticed the mower bag was already full, so I detached it and headed over to a flower bed to dump out the shredded leaves. They proceeded to blow up in my face, courtesy of the wind, although the leaves did mostly land where I aimed them. This was turning out to be a dusty, messy job.

A few more laps across the yard produced a few more bags full of leaves. I mowed, and dumped, and mowed, and dumped. Pretty soon I ran out of places to dump, but still had most of the yard covered with leaves. And there was an increasingly strong wind blowing leaves back over onto the parts of the yard that I had already cleared.

I finished mowing, packing as much leafy goodness into the mower bag as possible, then made one last bag dump in the far corner of the yard behind my shed. Sure, it definitely needed mulched leaves back there. At least they were out of my way.

Then came the giant fig leaves underneath the fig tree, in a land where no mower could go. This would require the rake and bag approach. I climbed around under the tree, dragging the rake along with me. Pretty soon I had some nice piles of sweet-smelling fig leaves, ready to be bagged. The only problem was holding onto the bag without it blowing away, and trying to stuff the leaves into the bag before they blew away.

It was a challenge, and I'm sure it provided a humorous Clark Griswald-esque scene for any neighbors watching my yard antics. But, I was determined to get those leaves into the bags. Finally, I bagged up enough leaves to consider the task complete.

I thought I was finished, but as I gazed back towards the house, I noticed an over-abundance of leaf-age crammed into my gutters. Well, I thought, since I'm de-leafing today, I might as well do everything that needs to be done to properly de-leaf the entire yard and house. I grabbed my ladder from the garage and climbed up to the gutters to assess the situation.

Many, many leaves. A plethora, if you will. I started grabbing them by the handful and dropping them to the ground. So far, not a problem.

Then I got to the clogged part of the gutter, and I suddenly understood why this was such a disgusting job that people usually pay gutter cleaning people to do. Wet, moldy, black leaves are quite possibly the most disgusting thing on the planet. They stink, they stick together, they coagulate. They drip with black leaf juice. As I dug into the clogged area, I was consequently covered with black leaf juice, which was made much worse by the pounding wind that took the opportunity to spray leaf juice right in my face.

I stuffed the leaves into a bag, which I held in one hand while it flapped in the wind, as I hung precariously to my ladder and also flapped and flailed in the wind. I have a very nice roof, which I'd never seen from close up before. But I vowed right then and there to never get that close to it again. Fun in the wind on a ladder with swirling moldy leaves is not actually so much fun.

As I go through many first time experiences in the ownership of my new house, I come across things from time to time that definitely should be jobs for a boy, and not a job for me. I now see why gutter cleaning is a Boy Job. Girls just shouldn't do that. Ever.

I finished the gutters, sprayed some water up there to clean out the muck, and then surveyed the entire leaf-in-yard situation. I had successfully cleared away the thick top layer of leaves all around the yard.

The trees, however, had continued dumping a new layer of leaf-age, with much more leaf dropping to come, as I noticed the trees still had an amazing amount of leaves clinging to the branches.

Good heavens, that's a lot of leaves.

I called it a day.

C.T.