Leaves

I have been thinking about leaves a lot the last few weeks. Probably because it is fall, the colors are beautiful around our house, and we are raking each week to keep up with the falling leaves. Montanna, Eden and I spent a few hours outside raking the leaves last week and I started talking to Mom and Dad about raking leaves and it made us all start thinking about raking leaves at Riverside.

I loved the trees at our house. They were huge towering trees that were fun to climb, lay on the ground and watch, and some of them brought us apples and plums each year. My favorite tree in our backyard was the Willow tree. There may have been more than one, but I think I remember just the tree that had the treehous in it being a willow. I may remember this wrong, but I remember there being lots more of the cottonwood leaves that were on the ground and not as many of the willow, but when there was a windstorm, the willow branches would be all over the place.

We had enough rakes for each person in our family to have one so we could all work together and get the job done. I remember having a Family Home Evening or two about Synergism and what that word means. I still remember the word and its meaning, working together to get the job done more efficiently, so it must have been an effective lesson.

When we would rake in the fall it wouldn't be as big of a deal to rake the leaves up. It still was a lot of work and a huge job, but if we didn't get it done in the fall and waited until spring, the job was so much harder because the leaves were soaking wet and stuck, sometimes still frozen to the ground. We were able to get some pretty good sized piles of leaves with the amount of trees we had in our yard and we did jump in them and play in them quite a bit. It was fun watching Montanna and Eden playing in the leaves since it brought back memories of having fun playing in the leaves with Ben, Lauren and Lesley and any other neighbor, April, or Tyler that happened to be over on the day we were raking. Lucky ducks! Usually our friends would chip in and help to get the jobs done.

While we have been raking here at our house, we have been putting all the leaves in either garbage cans or big black bags to put out for the garbage man. While I was talking to mom and dad last week we were remembering how we would get the big blue tarp out of the garage and lay it out flat and put as many leaves on it as we could. Then each of us would take  corner and we would dump it either on the garden to be tilled into the ground, or to the burn pile.

This is something we would do usually each fall and there were always the left over leaves that we didn't pick up in time for the snow to start falling. Even though we probably complained and were upset about having to rake each time, there are definitely some good memories attached to raking leaves and I really enjoy doing it now. Plus, the yard looks so good for a little while after raking. Until the wind picks up again.

Lindsey