Leaf Raking Season

It's officially leaf raking season around our house. The outdoor work is a welcome change from our regular daily indoor work, and, in my case, the extra indoor work involved in clearing out my mother's house. Working at her house is a balance of hard physical and emotional work, as we go through photographs, letters, books, housewares, and collectibles and separate out what needs to be kept from what needs to be let go, traveling through past memories as items are sorted one by one.

Leaf raking, on the other hand, is very in-the-moment. We still prefer to rake the old-fashioned way, by hand with rakes, sweeping up piles of leaves into a tarp and dragging the tarp into the woods to empty it into big old deep leaf piles from years past.

The brunt of the work falls on Ben, who diligently clears the leaves off the roof and does the yoeman's job of the heavy raking under the four big trees around the house. Often, though, we work together, time we value since we spend so much of our days apart from each other. It's a good opportunity to chat and catch up with each other. Occasionally Paul helps out, though he still thinks the goal of leaf-raking is to make big piles that he can jump into!

This year we are watching our new pond with interest to see how it handles the abundance of leaves which fall into it and the increasingly cold weather. We haven't seen the fish for a couple of weeks and presume that they have begun their hibernation. We really miss them, and when Goldie made a brief appearance the other evening we all came out to watch her as she cruised around the surface for a while before disappearing again. Good-bye, we hope to see you in the spring!

All in all, it is a lovely time of year.