Leaves, leaves, leaving...

from Kar's Kith and Kin, google

The leaves are falling. In piles, in heaps, in wet gooey masses in planters, on the swimming pool cover, under the lowest bushes. They are a foot deep in places where the wind has swirled them. And, because it rains three hundred fifty-eight days a year where I live, the leaves are always wet, slick and heavy. And hard to rake, sweep, or otherwise gather up and transport.

It is hard work, and not very gratifying. Its not like planting a garden, or mowing the lawn, where you feel a sense of tidiness after. Rather, raking and hauling leaves is forced maintenance done on nature's schedule, not my own. I either do it when the leaves are newly fallen and have some structural integrity, or do it later when they begin to resemble cooked spinach.

So, George and I spent the day listening to the university football game on the truck radio and raking leaves. Sounds cozy, doesn't it? In a way, I guess it was. It is the kind of day for thinking, working, reflecting. How many millions of leaves have we raked together? How many autumns have we worked side by side through? How many different lawns, for that matter, have we tidied together?

What's different now is that no kids are helping, no babies are carrying chubby handfuls of leaves to deposit on tiptoe into the wheelbarrow (pronounced wah-bee-oh in our family, thanks to one of those long ago babies). No teenagers shriek through the yard, throwing leaves at one another and threatening bodily harm. It is again just George and I. It is quiet with just the wind chimes and the soft clucking of the chickens.

It is autumn, and it is a time for leaving.