Leaves are falling; it's time to dance with the Grim Raker
By Burton W. Cole
I have yet to come up with a single logical reason why I should rake leaves.
The rain of colorful, crunchy carpeting is well underway. The leaves swoosh and crackle with every step I take. It means that my front yard boasts plusher carpeting than does my living room.
The herd of trees on my little plot out in the country spent much of the year dropping twigs, branches and even full limbs all over the yard. Now the hickory trees are in full bombing mode.
That's just another reason why I can't rake. The minefield of sticks and stone-hard nuts would wreak havoc on the tines of my rake. It would be inhumane to subject the rake to such peril.
Oh, sure, I could trot around the yard with my wheelbarrow and tote away all the nuts and twigs. Fortunately, now they're concealed beneath a 3-inch crackly blanket of reds, oranges, golds and browns.
If I mustered the effort to rake the leaves, it would just show reveal that I had been too lazy to pick up sticks all spring and summer. If I don't rake, I still look lazy but with a lot less work. Logic suggests that I go inside and watch football from my La-Z-Boy instead.
Also, I am sure I read somewhere that leaves are nature's way of protecting the ground from the harsh winter snow. I can't put my hands on the documentation right now, but I'm certain that the green lesson here is that to rake would be to disturb nature itself.
Plus, it would disturb me.
Cousin Nancy once suggested that I think of autumn yard work as a New! Improved! exercise craze called Rake Dancing. She hopes to make a bundle of money — a bundle as thick as the leaves that were in her yard before five hours of Rake Dancing — by renaming her rake and selling it as the latest fat buster.
There's a great inspirational quote about dancing like nobody's watching. But if there's a 60-some-year fat guy doing a tango with a rake while tripping over buried tree limbs and screaming at the squirrels to stop throwing hickory nuts, trust me, somebody WILL be watching. And that somebody will call for an ambulance or sheriff's deputies, depending on which state of unbalance the Grim Rake Dancer happens to be at the moment of crazed observations.
No, I think it would be best for all concerned to just let sleeping leaves lie.
Unless YOU wish to try the new Rake Dancing craze. Or if you need padding.
Years ago, the boys who lived behind me and a slew of their friends spent hours of summer time digging holes and building ramps for a backyard BMX bicycle course. Then they spent hours and hours of summer time sailing their bicycles high in the air, crashing back to earth with acrobatic ease or bone-jarring thuds, depending on whether the stunts worked.
One autumn day, the boys tried a new trick. They raked all the leaves from their back yard into a huge pile a flying leap past the biggest dirt ramp. Then they sailed their bikes through the air and dove into the pile of leaves.
After a few crashes they decided they need more leaves. "Hey, do you mind if we rake the leaves out of your yard?" They packed off a few dozen bushels of ground cover.
The boys have grown up and gone away. The leaves remain. So should you want to jump your own bike into a pile of leaves, I have plenty of cushioning for sale. Stop by with your Rake Dancer and I would be happy to let you take all the leaves you want for the bargain price of a $1 a bag. I'll be inside watching football.
Dance with Burt at burton.w.cole @ gmail. com or the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.