Grrr and Brrr ...

Another glorious day … just perfect for walking and raking leaves. The latter task, it seemed, was on everyone’s Sunday agenda.

Well I’ve never let those leaves pile up like I did this year. As I mentioned in yesterday post, every time I was ready to do them, it was either rainy, or the wind was howling and blowing them around, so rather than rake them, then find everyone’s leaves on my lawn the next day, I let them sit … and sit … and sit.

This morning before I set out on my walk at Council Point Park, I looked outside – the sky was a flawless, beautiful blue and it was perfectly calm. Well, grrr … no excuses now to get those leaves raked and bagged up. Brrr … there was frost on the grass, (which grass I could see and was not covered in leaves) and Marge’s big thermometer was pointing at 32 degrees, so I went back in and put on a warmer coat. The air was frosty too and little wisps of my breath came out as I was walking.

I picked up the pace a bit to get the blood flowing to warm myself up. There was a handful of walkers at the Park – the weekend crowd is thinning out as many resort to their treadmills now or sleep in. I had some peanuts, but once again – no takers. Your loss guys.

I did two loops, which was five miles, then headed home to get out in the yard. By now, the neighborhood was a cacophony of screeching sounds from people using their mowers to munch the leaves and create mulch, or, those who were wielding their leaf blowers. I swear I saw leaves blowing up in the air as high as the roof in some cases. At the other end of the street were the sounds of giggling and barking and the scraping of the tines of the rake on the concrete. As quickly as Dad could rake ‘em up and make a pile of leaves, along came the kids and the dog to make mayhem in a matter of seconds with that ever-growing pile of fallen foliage.

It was an eight-bag job by the time I finally finished . I had plenty of fresh air today – over an hour’s worth of walking and another four hours of doing yard chores and dealing with the leaves. I was starving, my oatmeal having gone down to my toes hours ago. All in all, it was a stellar weather day once it warmed up a tad. While lugging the bags of leaves to the curb for tomorrow’s yard waste pickup, I was reminded of a phrase my mom would say when she wanted me to go and play outside when the weather got colder, and I was content to just sit and read one of my books in the warm and cozy house. She’d say “go out and get some fresh air and get the stink off of you” … more pearls of wisdom from Mom. Okay, I got the stink off of me; I came inside smelling faintly of musty leaves and fresh air and I know I’ll sleep good tonight.

You can catch up on my blog posts before I started blogging at Patch in August 2013 by going here: http://lindaschaubblog.net/