Take It or Leaf It

Must Be The Season Of The Leaves

Our across-the-street neighbor’s property sits up on a little rise and right next to a large wooded lot. Which is to say, when we look out our window, there are approximately 8 billion leaves up there.

This morning though, the kids of the neighborhood decided they were going to do something about it. Little Bean and about seven or eight of her friends gathered up all the rakes and shovels and barrels they could find and went to work.

And by work I mean gathering the leaves in several large piles and then repeatedly jumping in them. At one point, one of the kids showed up with a leaf blower and full on leaf chaos broke out.

Little Bean ran back to the house and fetched four pairs of swimming goggles (don’t ask why she has four pairs) and there they were, blowing leaves at each other covered in bits and pieces and wearing swimming goggles. Dare I say, it was a very New England sort of morning.

We have leaves as well of course. This fall feels like there way more leaves than during a normal fall. And yes ok, we could just leaf them there and then, the snow or something would break the up, I don’t know. I’ve always picked up the leaves.

After lunch, a group of the kids actually did run into our back yard and filled six yard waste bags up with our leaves. That’s a pretty good haul and will save me some time. I took a picture of the curb at our neighbor up the street - he has 30 bags. It’s like he’s been saving his leaves from the past several years!

In “Gathering Leaves” Frost wrote about leaves as though they were to be farmed:

Next to nothing for use,

But a crop is a crop,

And who’s to say where

The harvest shall stop?

The harvest never stops. Not so long as there’s kids willing to jump in them The crop returns. The bags are never full. We tumble toward winter.