How We Spent Our Saturday

Unlike years past, we've been diligently raking up the leaves this fall, to keep our grass from dying. We noticed that if we removed the leaves weekly, the task didn't seem quite so onerous. That and we have a fancy, new, battery-powered lawnmower that's super quiet and does a pretty good job of scooping up, mulching, and bagging the leaves, making the huge backyard seem a lot easier to handle (oh, and it also cuts grass).

Black and Decker CM1936

We especially wanted to make sure the new grass coming up on the newly defined borders of our flower beds had every opportunity to grow. See that nice pretty green hidden under the leaves?

(Oh, and on a side note, we decided to "mulch" our garden with chopped up leaves, which are supposedly a handy free way to keep bulbs and baby plants warm all winter. Easier than hauling mulch, that's for sure...)

So after all this raking, imagine our dismay to wake up to this on Saturday morning:

You would never guess that we had raked 6 days earlier. But after 2.5 hours of intense raking, mowing, and hauling:

 And just to prove that we did the whole yard and not just the half in the photo:

(We did the back too, but since I didn't get a before photo, I didn't see much point in getting an after one.)

The better news comes from these views:

Not too many more leaves left to fall!!! Hopefully we got the bulk of it and won't have to spend another whole day doing clean up again until spring.

Oh, and for anyone keeping track, after FOUR WEEKS of regular yard waste pick up, we still have a hefty amount of liriope sitting in our driveway waiting for its turn on the curb. But I'm happy to report that now, on the fifth week, it's finally GONE!!!!! Next we just have to bundle up the compose from under the tarp and we'll have our driveway back!