Thankful November: Day 5 (late again)

I had it in my mind to post this yesterday, even made sure to take pictures of it, but here we are ... a day late again.  Oh well, it's the effort that counts, right?

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of experience the visual feast that is our yard in the fall, here is just a sample of the crazy fallen leaf cover we get every single year.  (And this is just the front yard.  Believe it or not, the back is twice as crazy.)

Leaf removal is one of my main fall stressors.  (Just ask my poor sister yesterday ... she heard the rant and watch me twitch as they flew over the house and into the front yard.)  Since we are having unseasonably warm and, more importantly, dry weather, I thought I would take it upon myself to try sucking up the leaves with my ... we'll call it a reverse leaf blower, or RLB for short.  I don't often get to use my RLB because by the time I actually get to the leaves they've been sitting on the yard for a while, getting wet with each passing day whether it be by rain or dew or even snow.*  

But yesterday afternoon the leaves were dry, my resolve was firm, and I went out into the yard and sucked up a bunch of leaves.  This isn't even all of them.  There was a huge pile to the right of our garage I sucked up as well as some in the landscaping.  (But I think I am the only one really geeked about all these pictures, so I'll just post two.  You get the idea.)

 To make a long story short, I am grateful to have gotten at least part of the leaf mess taken care of yesterday.  Did I get incredibly sore from my efforts?  My body says, "Yes."  Did the RLB make an incredible mess all over the driveway, my clothes, my hair, the air, etc.?  Oh my goodness, yes.  I was trying to blow the crushed leaf dust off the driveway when my father-in-law was coming back from his daily walk, and as he walked over the hill near our house he said the cloud I was producing made him think something was on fire.  And I'm not entirely sure the leaf dust is going to come out of the jeans I was wearing ... only a good run through the washing machine will tell.

But I got a lot of the leaves taken care of and the crushed up leaves took up a lot less room than just dumping them over the fence in the back like I usually do.  Okay, maybe that picture is worth posting.  Hold on ...

Pretty impressive, right?!  All those leaves fit into that tiny little bag!  But because of the giant mess my RLB made I am going to switch back to regular raking (or leaf blowing) for a while.  

This is a long post about leaves.  I'm just so grateful I got a bunch of them taken care of yesterday!

* Fun fact: I often have to deal with the leaves after it has snowed because I have procrastinated taking care of them.  The procrastination often leads to some pretty intense guilt on my part, but I recently learned that procrastination is often attributed to anxiety, which I have in spades.  Knowledge is power, so I'm trying to take it easy on myself about this now, but that's not always the simplest thing to do ... particularly when you struggle with anxiety.  Anyway, here's an article about it to expand your knowledge.  Enjoy!