leaves

this is the second fall we have spent our house. and the falling of leaves has twice produced what we call, "leaf disasters." when we first moved into our house it was mid-november. all the leaves had already fallen but the previous owners had not helped to rake any of them up. (i should mention here that we have seven oak trees and one maple tree. there are a lot of leaves that fall from those eight trees!) because we were busy unpacking boxes and settling into our new home, we failed to rake the leaves before the first snow fall. all winter long we would gaze out of our windows and imagine all of those leaves decomposing under that snow, killing our grass. something had to be done.

on the first dry day we went to war on those leaves. we spent an entire day raking, bagging, raking, and bagging. but the leaves won. we were unable to get it all done. we ended up leaving large piles of soggy leaves in the corners of our yard. and, b/c the garbage service doesn't pick up leaves in the winter, we were stuck with all of the bagged leaves as well. come spring we had a lot of dead grass. but worse, we had wet, decomposed bags filled with awful smelling decomposed leaves. it was a mess. and we had to start our raking and bagging all over again.

but with our second attempt came a "tip" from a friend. after telling him of our leaf woes and showing him our empty pockets b/c of numerous bag buying runs to meijer, he told us of a place where we could dump our leaves for free! we immediately loaded our jeep with wet soggy leaves and drove to this dump. we were amazed by what we saw--the biggest pile of leaves a kid could ever dream of. it was obvious that many, many people dump their leaves at the free dump. and some of them are apparently very lazy. interspersed amongst the leaves were many grand rapids yard waste bags, just waiting to be emptied and taken! we don't understand why people would buy the bags, drive them to the dump, and leave them there instead of just putting them on their curb, or taking them back home to re-use. but we consider that their gift to us. i sent brett deep into the leaf pile to collect as many bags as he could so that we could use them. we left with 10 new bags.

now tis our second fall season on hall street. the leaves have fallen. and we had our second epic battle over the past weekend. but this year we were a little more organized. first, the leaves were not wet and buried under snow. and second, we exchanged favors with a friend of ours who lives in E. Grand Rapids. they pay really high taxes so that they can simply rake their leaves into the street and have them whooshed up by a big truck. their favor to us was to allow us to dump about half of our leaves in front of their house.

we raked all day long. almost twenty bags went to our friend's house. and about another ten went to the free dump, where we snagged some more bags left by people who don't understand the concept that buying city bags means that you can put them out on your curb. why people? why?

after almost thirty bags and a whole Saturday spent, we are still not finished taking care of our "leaf disaster." but we're getting there. i filled another four last night and probably have another five or six to go. if i go missing just kick around some of the leaf piles in my back yard. i may be buried there. -sn