UPDATE: 2019 Leaf Campaign

It was an exhausting weekend of working on the leaves, my friends, but I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Prior to this past weekend, I had hauled a total of 27 tarp-loads of leaves to the curb since October 25th. But the leaves continue to drop from our oak tress. I woke up Saturday morning to a layer of leaves coating our backyard (photo above) and got to work. I collected all of the leaves in the backyard into piles using my trusty Husqvarna 350BT Leafblower and then raked the piles onto the tarp. I ended up dragging 9 tarps of leaves from the backyard to the front curb on Saturday. With snow predicted for today, Monday, I needed to continue working on leaves yesterday, Sunday. I climbed up on the roof and blew off the leaves and cleaned out the gutters and then gave the back and front yards another going over and ended up dragging 4 more tarps to the curb.

Overall status? After 2.5 weeks, the halfway-point of the 5-week leaf campaign, I’ve hauled a total of 40 tarps of leaves to the front curb. From past experience, I can expect to haul 10+ more tarps to the curb, but snow may complicate matters.

Sidenote: Every Fall, I remind my lovely wife not to expect much out of me from the last week of October until the first week of December because I will be preoccupied, or rather, CONSUMED, with gathering up all of the leaves in the yard. My wife always objects to this and wonders if I am taking the wrong approach. Every year she suggests that I should wait until the last week of November-first week of December when all of the leaves have come down before I get started. This approach seems much more logical to her rather than going out there twice or three times a week with my leaf blower and gathering the scattered leaves into piles and dragging them to the curb. She believes I am being redundant and wasting time and energy, which could be better spent working on her to-do list. But my wife’s plan has two MAJOR flaws, which I point out to her every year:

• If I waited until all the leaves fell, I would be hauling 50+ tarp-loads of leaves to the curb in a single week/weekend rather than spacing them out over the five week period. Raking a pile of leaves onto a tarp and then dragging it from the backyard to the front curb is physically exhausting work. Dragging 10 tarp-loads on a single Saturday absolutely wipes me out. I could not imagine trying to deal with 50+ tarp-loads in one week/weekend.
• As we get into late-November, early-December, snow increasingly becomes a factor. If I waited until all the leaves fell, there’s a very real possibility I would not be able to collect them because of the snow.

This arduous leaf campaign brings to mind many Bible passages regarding work/toil, procrastination, and following a wrong plan that seems wise to some.