Leaves, leaves and more leaves!!!

Even after our lumberjacks paid a visit and cleaned up some of our trees, we still have oodles of oaks, which shed lots of leaves in the fall. I have already begun to mentally prepare myself for the loads and loads of snow I know we're going to have to shovel this winter as Michigander homeowners, but I overlooked fall. Hm, shouldn't have done that...

Sometime early last week I stepped out back with a rake, and Micah at my heels, to attack the backyard with it's blanket of leaves. An hour into it I had filled 3 large trash bags to the brim, and had only raked about, well, maybe 1/6 of our backyard? I called it quits and retreated back into the house. It was quite the chore!

So on Sunday Scotty, my mother-in-law Lisa and I stepped out to take this job full-on. I married into quite the line of "machines" - Scotty and Lisa stuck to it until the job was done. We all put in 4 hours (12 man-hours total!!), and just barely got the job done (the last 20 minutes or so of raking the front lawn was done in the moonlight - and our car headlights pointing at us). We could NOT have gotten the job done without Lisa.

When it was all said and done, we filled about 50 brown lawn and garden bags full of leaves. The following photo album is just a whole lot of leaf action, so not the most exciting slideshow ever. :-) I didn't get an "after" photo of the front yard, because it was too dark when we finished...but already more leaves are falling so it's too late for that picture. I think I need to go buy more leaf bags...

Leaves!!