Day One Hundred and Thirty-Three

I'm having another go at Item #63 (spend at least 15 minutes outside every day for 100 consecutive days). When I first chose that goal, I was envisioning myself sitting on the front porch on an autumn afternoon, the golden sunlight spilling across the pages of my classic novel. Perhaps I would go on long hikes through the beautiful woods and valleys of Oregon. Maybe I would lie in the dappled shade under my beloved oak tree, eyes closed, drinking in the sweet scents of summer.

I was not envisioning having to scrub the residue of three years' worth of half-decayed oak leaves out from under my fingernails.

I love this tree, I really do. I love its stark skeleton in winter, the tiny leaves in spring, the full glory of its green canopy in summer, and the gentle fading to brown in the fall. I don't even mind raking the thousands (millions?) of leaves that fall on the yard every October and November - it's good exercise, it smells nice, and it's a good excuse to go outside.* But I do not love the way its leaves get into my flowerbed.

I use the term "flowerbed" loosely. The previous residents adhered to the one-of-everything gardening philosophy. In the rose border, the grandiose Mr. Lincoln's deep red petals and long stems tower over humbler unnamed varieties, which surround a single inexplicable mini rosebush. There was one blue primrose, one yellow primrose, one butterfly bush, a single random red tulip, one yellow tulip on the far side of a decorative rock, one pink hyacinth, one white hyacinth, and a rhododendron. I ask you, who plants ONE tulip?! In the deep bowl-shaped flowerbed which surrounds the tree, vinca and ivy (presumably originally one of each) have taken over much of it, and they serve as excellent leaf traps. In the places I have managed to beat the vines back, the leaves have simply settled. Every year. When I say "three years", I may be flattering myself.

I meant to rake them. It was just that the leaf bin filled up so fast with the leaves on the yard, and there was no room for the ones in the flowerbed. I would intend to come back and rake them out as soon as the leaves all fell off the tree, but then it would be raining, and wet, and cold, and sometimes it even snowed, and I could hardly be expected to rake leaves in the snow, could I? Well, there were many good excuses, and I used them all. Today, though, they all expired at once, and I set to work.

I cleared approximately 12 square feet before filling the yard bin so full of rotted leaves and sticks that I could barely pull it back up the hill. At this rate, this should keep me entertained well into March. On the other hand, hauling all those leaves has to burn off at least a few calories, wouldn't you think?



* Little-known fact about me: There is one extra reason that I like raking leaves. I was on color guard for a year in the high school marching band, the ones that wore the little purple and white cheerleader outfits and twirled flags and threw them in the air and tried hard not to have them land across the bridges of our noses and knock us out. It turns out that the balance and weight of a sturdy rake is surprisingly close to that of a performance flag, and if my kids are around and the neighbors aren't watching, I can still do quite credible twirls with right and left hand, the figure-eight two-handed twirl both front and back, and the horizontal overhead twirl that looks SO cool from the stands. I can do the overhead throws from the figure-eight pattern, but I seem to have accidentally forgotten the horizontal overhead throw that could (theoretically) land on my nose. Oh well ... it's not like I'll ever really need it in my current line of work. (The overhead throw, I mean. The nose, I'd like to keep.)