The Rites – And Wrongs – Of Autumn
It’s finally happened: I’ve grown so accustomed to the roar of the leaf blower that I now longer recoil and curse at the first sonic blast of fall, but simply shake my head and sigh.
Fact is, I give up. You want to shatter your eardrums, waste gas or electricity and complete a task that any healthy, normal person can accomplish much faster, neater and cheaper while getting some exercise, fine.
A couple years ago I thought I made a definitive case by demonstrating on a video accompanying my write-up in this forum that the best way to clear a lawn or driveway of leaves is with a rake. Loyal readers and viewers will recall that in a race between me armed only with a $9.99 plastic garden tool and a friend wielding a gas-powered blower I not only finished in about half the time but also had time for a relaxing massage.
Anyway, like most of you I’m now nearly finished with my annual autumn ritual, using the same rake that carried me to victory. The leaves are mostly down from the birch, maple and dogwood – later in the season than I can recall thanks to lingering warm, dry weather – but still stubbornly cling to some oak and beech.
I can’t wait for all of them to hit the ground though, because once leaves get wet they clump together in a heavy, soggy, unwieldy mess, and you might as well be trying to rake mud.
Most of my raking is on the extensive network of trails I built in the woods behind our house, and the easiest procedure would be to sweep off the dirt paths and leave them along the sides – but I haven’t quite mastered the art of simplicity when it comes to outdoor projects.
Instead, I rake leaves into piles, then scoop them into 30-gallon garbage pails that I carry two at a time for a hundred yards or more and dump into an evergreen seedling nursery as mulch. I also scatter leaves among the thousands of spruce, pine and fir I’ve planted over the decades. This leaf-clearing and mulching operation takes about a week, or longer if I’m distracted.
It doesn’t take much to shift my focus – a red tail hawk screeching and wheeling overhead; a garter snake enjoying a late-season sunbath on a rock; a ray of sunshine poking through the clouds, a dead branch that needs to be pruned …
The other day I put down my rake and picked up a crowbar. After more than a year of procrastinating I finally resolved to repair a giant stone cairn that had collapsed because of my shoddy design. A welcome visit from our son, Tom, formerly a virtually unlimited source of free labor but lately living out West, helped me reach this decision.
This tower originally measured about 8 feet across and 10 feet tall, which proved to be its undoing one winter night.
Our repair, which took a couple of days, required us to drag aside most of the toppled boulders – some as big as the speakers at a Metallica concert – and then restack them in a more stable configuration. I decided to limit the height of the rebuilt cairn to about 6 feet, so now I have a pile of leftovers next to the restored cairn. I may have to build another cairn.
By the way, if you’re wondering why I built a cairn in the first place (one of three such towers scattered around the property), I give an answer similar to the response George Mallory provided when questioned why anyone would want to climb Mount Everest: Because all the rocks are there.
As previously chronicled, I’ve used rocks to line my paths, as stairs leading to the woodsheds, as terraces for gardening, and sometimes just to make artistic statements. What else are you going to do with such a bounty of free building materials?
So now that the tower is rebuilt, I’m back to raking – but wait…
I must plant about 200 garlic cloves before the ground freezes.
And the blueberry bushes need pruning. The grape vines also have to be trimmed and tied to wire supports. I also might as well pull out the tomato cages.
Tom already transplanted most of our kale into pots that now occupy part of our dining room, and I’m thinking about digging up the rest soon and also moving them inside for the winter as an experiment. If it works I’ll be enjoying fresh kale all year.
Then there’s kayaking, hiking and all sorts of other activities that are keeping me from finishing raking and other autumn tasks. Oh well. The leaves will still be there, and if they become overly sodden I only have myself to blame.
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