grateful for leaves today

That is, I am grateful that the stinking leaves have finally all fallen from the stinking New England trees! As you can tell, I'm not a fan of the trees. I like trees in general. I know their purpose and I appreciate them. I majored in biology and can even lean towards the tree-hugging type, but, I hate their sheer volume here. When I came home from Salt Lake this summer and plunged into the dark green forest tunnels to drive home from the airport, I started crying and cried for more than a day that I was back in this claustrophobic, closed-in world.

Now, I can see some of the sky! Yay! We can also get rid of the leaves now that they have all fallen. Last year, we had an early, hard, and long winter. The snow fell before we got everything cleaned up, and the endless snow plow passes, scooped up all of the leaves from our dirt road and shot them to the side making a 1000 layer cemented sandwich of sand/leaves/sand/leaves in front of our fence. This took me 15 hours and 20 giant bags to clean up in the spring!

Today, I am grateful that I spent 1 hour and 6 bags and the front of our fence is now (mostly) leaf free! I just saved myself a week of work next spring! I am seriously elated. I know most people don't understand my joy, but, to all of you who think that living in this picturesque part of the country would be so lovely... just remember... those leaves are all so much nicer when they are firmly in place on a tree on a postcard!

Now, this is what the back-corner of our yard looks like. I didn't say we were done...