Woo Hoo for us – the temperature is low and the sky is clear. The air is refreshing. Football weather is what we in the old Midwest call it. Crisp and uplifting. I also think of it as “go back to school” weather because we started later all those years ago and even with some hot days, more often than not, the mornings would be chilly in a good way. I think fall weather all year round would not be bad at all.

Wow, a boring weather paragraph. Actually, it is sort of a contentment paragraph. Soon, I will start thinking about raking, however, and that is another matter. That is a subject of fall navigation requiring an experienced skipper, one who can keep a fluid accounting of energies, leaf pattern falling, expected rain, wind and whatever. Sometimes I go for the wait until the last leaf has fallen and then push them onto tarps and make almost endless trips to the curb to construct the Leaf Siege Wall.  Or I will try the quick rake a day to keep the leaf drifts away. I usually get behind on that, though. Since we  can’t burn leaves here in town, you don’t have a great reward waiting for you after heavy-duty raking hours. Bummer.

That part about putting the leaves on the curb? Guess what happens then. The city machines sometimes EAT your curb. So most people push the leaves past the curb into the street. I do that. I do that fast. I pull the tarp out, fold it over a bit and run back into the yard and behind the house. Of course, once it is done, they know there was a perpetration of a leaf crime, but at least there are no direct witnesses.