Third Time Raking

  When I came back from doing laps in the neighbor's lane, Tom was raking leaves on the north side of the house. It's a big project so I grabbed a rake and began to help. We've been at it for hours (we broke for lunch) and decided that that was enough for today.

 There's still plenty of leaves in the trees - though mostly the lower limbs - so our work is not done. In fact we'll  also be making more work on Thursday when we clean out the gutters. Why Thursday? It's supposed to be sunny and 80°. That'll be hard to beat. I'm usually fishing soggy leaves out of the gutter that are half frozen.

 The past two days have given us over two inches of rain and we didn't want to leave the thick mat of leaves on the lawn any longer than necessary. We've raked twice before this season but there always seem to be more in a day or two.

 After finishing the north lawn, Tom wanted to keep going so we moved to the south lawn nearest the house. The other south lawn, nearest the neighbor's lane, only has a hackberry dropping leaves and those seem to blow away on their own.

 Atop the kitchen roof are plenty more leaves. And the lower branches of the maple are surely not bare. But a leaf picked up is a leaf that doesn't need to be picked up again. These were wet leaves, heavy to move, but we carried them to the garden where we'll turn  them into the soil before winter arrives if the weather permits. They're great, free mulch.

 Here's a view of the garden. It's probably buried under a foot of leaves in places. In  the foreground is Tom's tree nursery. We have them growing in the garden until they're large enough to move to a final spot. We have them in wire cages as some protection from the deer.

 So our fall work continues and I suppose it won't be quite finished until the first snow flakes fly.