Fall Fatalities

This is your backyard. Now start raking.

As much as I love Fall and all the wondrous and joyous things it brings me, there are a few things about this season that I think we, at least those of us who live in the Mid-Atlantic to Northeast region of the United States, could go without. You know what I'm talking about; Raking Leaves.

I understand why we have to do it, I mean who wants a beautiful blanket of autumn leaves on your lawn, transforming the quickly dying grass into a mini cornucopia of colors until the snow comes down? certainly something so evil as these must be destroyed. But no not by the adults who want them gone - by their children who couldn't care less if there is a pile of leaves in the backyard or not.

Your parents bug you for days and days on end to go rake the leaves up and eventually you have to do it, for a fee of course. But the fee is so insubstantial that we might as well be child workers in the Great Depression for the little reward we get out of this unpleasant task. The leaves always have weird things like twigs and mud and SPIDER CRICKETS in them, and for some reason are always slightly damp even if it hasn't rained in a while....

If you have parents like mine, then bagging is even worse than raking. My parents make us fill a bag, then sit on it in order to compress the leaves and simultaneously making it harder to meet my bagging quota for the day. When I am finally done after 3 and a half hours of bagging I am cold, sweaty, irritable, and smell faintly of mold and forest. I shower and get handed 4 dollars by my parents. One. for. each. bag.

So for those of you who live in temperate regions, Kudos. For those of you who live in Cities, Great. For those of you who live in a Coniferous forest, that's unfair. And for people who live in woodlands and actual forests, my thoughts are with you this November.