Monday, November 02, 2009

Grab Your Thesaurus

I know when I moved back to Pittsburgh I asked for this.

I love fall. Raking leaves requires a different adjective. LeafWars 2009 is ON!

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Forgive the lack of a “before” photo. This was after about 20 minutes of hard labor

Following a chat with SuperNeighbor on Sunday morning, I decided he had the right idea. Do a little bit each day. Ignore the areas where there are still trees full of leaves. I spent an hour out there today. Did half the back yard and most of the side yard.

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I wore gloves. My palms were still a little unhappy with my time spent rake-in-hand today.

It’s a great workout. My heart rate was probably around 140 for nearly the entire hour.

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It’s not going to look anywhere near this good in the morning.

And it was great to be outside on a beautiful fall day.

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And there are plenty more backyard leaves just waiting for me tomorrow. ::sigh::

But how do I really feel about leaf raking? Hate. Loathe. Detest. Abhor.

It’ll be weeks before I see the end of LeafWars09. Here’s hoping I can just stay even in the daily battles. I'd much rather shovel snow. There. I said it.

9 comments:

Bezzie said...

Ha ha! I'm going to be the weirdo that just mows them to mulch them...I'm too lazy to rake/blow them.

Sarah said...

Think it's time to invest in a leaf blower? It might save your hands at least.

turtlegirl76 said...

I used to love raking leaves. Of course, my mom would hate that my sister and I would rake them into a huge pile, only to mess it up and jump in it gleefully. Hehehehe

Jen said...

Good luck with the war. We employ the mowing method with the mulching blade and bag here, but it looks like you may have more than us. We also have a leaf blower/sucker with a bag. Maybe one of those would work for you?

Trillian42 said...

Before the big giant tree was taken out of our yard, it was just too much for us to even think about. So, we ignored them and let the mower get them. Now that that tree is gone AND our front yard has been landscaped, I'm thinking we might actually start raking. And by "we", I mean "me". And by "raking", I mean "investing in a new leafblower". :D

Donna Lee said...

We won't rake them until they've all fallen. I can't see doing it over and over. Some trees are so stubborn and hang onto their leaves for a long time.

Jenn said...

I'm with Donna Lee, we don't touch ours until all of them are down. But our yard is small and mostly a hill, so raking takess no time at all. Gravity is on our side!

I actually don't mind shoveling all that much either because our driveway is so small. Much better than our first apartment where we had tons of sidewalk and we had to shovel the alley so the old dude who lived below us wouldn't spin his tires until it was a sheet of ice. The alley went downhill to a dead end and he had bald tires. Gravity was not our friend there.

Celtic Queen said...

Remember when I offered a Celting for the new socks? They do leaves as well as bathrooms.... Just saying.....

Zonda said...

I don't envy you one bit! I detest raking big areas like that.