And how many “grabs” is it going to take to get rid of mounds of leaves?

I can’t cite where this picture is from because it popped up amid a lot of Google images about leaves.

Saturday I worked for several hours on the last wave of leaves to come down. I found myself thinking of Joyce Kilmer and grade school and trees in a slightly different way – sort of “God, you made these trees, how about a big wind that sweeps away from my house.” Yes, I know, it’s selfish, but my neighbors are younger and one has a tractor with an attachment that sucks up and mulches leaves.

There’s a little more to my tale. After I had blown and raked a lot to the curb, I turned and looked at the driveway that curves around to the back. Ah, cement, no friction; the leaves should have slid along. They mocked my leaf blower.

And so I decided that since I needed a new snow shovel I would get one the next day and just shove those babies down to the street. That next day, yesterday, it started out with rain. I figured the snow shovel could still handle them; I looked at later and saw SNOW flakes.

This just threw my big picture plan to the wind (although the leaves stayed). I had intended to clear the drive with the snow shovel and when the first light snow of the season fell, you know, a wee bit, I’d go out and blow it off with the leaf blower.

Foiled again.