Trees and its Leaves: A Love Story with lots of hatred mixed in

One thing that I love about where we live is the number of trees we have in our neighborhood. Big, majestic, mature trees. It gives our area a great look. Our front yard, with the large trees, is seriously probably 20 degrees cooler in the summer than it is out in the street thanks to the leaf cover the trees provide.

But this love of trees really only happens from March until early October. Then it turns to unabashed hatred. Why would anyone hate a tender innocent tree, you may ask...well, those innocent trees drop leaf after leaf after leaf after leaf after, well, you get the point. My trees are mocking me. They drop some down in early October, then they drop a few more in early November...all the while waiting for big snowstorms. Then a big snowstorm hits and they dump even more leaves. Then the trees wait. Well, let me rephrase--my trees wait. They wait until December and they unload some more. They wait until January snow and then dump some more. They clog my rain gutters. They layer and suffocate my perfect lawn.



I am picking leaves up from mid-October until sometime in January. Last year? 85 bags of leaves. That is not a misprint. The year before, 90 bags of leaves. This year, it is up to 24 bags and as you can see from the picture, my trees still have 70% or more of their leaves. Good times. If you ever wonder where I am during the Fall and Winter, good guess is that I am in my lawn cursing under my breath as I fill up another clear plastic bag with leaves.







And don't get me started on that abominable apple tree of mine. Those freakin' apples will hang on for dear life until they start dropping rotten apples from the tree in the middle of February. Free applesauce in the middle of winter for any of you that want it. Rant over. Carry on.