Raking the FRICKING leaves...

[digitalwanderer]

Damn it, I HATE raking leaves. It seems so pointless, I mean there are still leaves that are going to fall down from the trees!

But me wife feels differently on the matter, and since tomorrow is Highland's leaf pick-up day me and the kids are gonna go out and do our bit.

I'm betting the kids last about 5 minutes helping me, then I'm on my own...

 

[Skrying]

I only do it for the front yard. I love to look out into my back yard and see all the pretty leaves all over the place, and then the deer come up and eat the berries. Sadly, I'm not suppose to do that (even though there are NO drains on my street and my back yard leads to the river) so I must clean up any area that is visible from the road in front of my house.

Good luck, and punish the kids if they give up on you!

 

[nutball]

Agent Orange, that's the answer. OK, you get *one* bad raking season, but after that you're rake free for life! What's not to love?!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Oh man, just finished about 20 minutes ago and I'm SORE!

On a happy note, I'm not dead nor did I have a heart attack. I pushed it like hell too, I guess my cardio doc was right.

 

[jamesnmandy]

i just rake them into a big pile and set a match to them......one of my favorite things about fall, is spending the day burning off all the leaves and fallen tree branches, too bad it's illegal in many places

 

[digitalwanderer]

It's illegal as hell here, the houses are way too close together for the practice to be safe.

We rake 'em to the curb and a large vacuum truck comes with this monster hose that's about 36" in diameter and just sucks 'em all up.

I only did my front yard, but my backyard has no trees and we're a corner house so the front is about 80% of our yard.

 

[jamesnmandy]

It's illegal as hell here, the houses are way too close together for the practice to be safe.

We rake 'em to the curb and a large vacuum truck comes with this monster hose that's about 36" in diameter and just sucks 'em all up.

I only did my front yard, but my backyard has no trees and we're a corner house so the front is about 80% of our yard.

how big is your yard? i dont live in the city.....i know alot of people in california have a yard that's 10ft x 10ft

around here, we typically have 1/2 and acre or more, i think my total property just in front of the house is around 2 acres.......i could not imagine raking all of that into a pile to be carted off

 

[Crisidelm]

(Vergilius, the Aeneid)
...Huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae
inpositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis...

( P. B. Shelley, Ode to the West Wind)
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my Words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a profecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

(G. Ungaretti, Soldiers)
Si sta come
d'autunno
sugli alberi
le foglie.

 

[digitalwanderer]

how big is your yard? i dont live in the city.....i know alot of people in california have a yard that's 10ft x 10ft

I don't live in the city either, I'm smack dab in the center of middle America suburbia.

I don't know how big an acre is either, but my lawn is probably around 120sq meters in front. (Rough guess, probably bad maths too. Maths is not my friend. )

It looks nice this morning though, surprised me. I finished after sundown and couldn't really see what I was doing near the end, but it looks like I did alright.

Next, time to fix an oven again...

 

[nelg]

I gather about 35 large bags every fall. Fun........................no.

 

[digitalwanderer]

It sucked greatly to do, but even I'll admit a small sense of accomplishment/pride seeing it all in the daylight this morning.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

LOl! so How much exercice you had to 2 hours? Boo hoo! poor little Digitalwanderer.
You should come to our summer cottage and do some raking there, It's a bit more that 120m2 and there is more than few trees also.

 

[digitalwanderer]

2-1/2 to 3 hours I'd say, but you must remember that I am ridiculously lazy.

 

[JBark]

I remember growing up, our house was on a couple acres with about a dozen very large oak trees. Ugh, raking the leaves was something that you did every weekend for over a month in the fall. We're talking truckloads and truckloads of leaves to the city brush dump.

The house my wife and I have, not a single tree on the lot, except for the tiny ornamental tree up front that drops a couple dozen leaves total. The few leaves that do show up in my yard just get mowed up during the last couple mowings. I love it.

A bit of shade over the deck would be nice in the summer, but I'll have moved long before a tree would ever grow enough to be useful.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

2-1/2 to 3 hours I'd say, but you must remember that I am ridiculously lazy.

Heh I was just teasing, and I'm lazy too, I hate raking, but usually I manage to avoid doing it. Some members of our family actually likes to do it

 

[Blitzkrieg]

If they were 5 fingered leaves I bet digi would have been raking them day and night.

 

[poopypoo]

If they were 5 fingered leaves I bet digi would have been raking them day and night.

lol... but it's the flowers we'd want, not the leaves... =9~

(Vergilius, the Aeneid)
...Huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae
inpositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis...

...good to know that Virgil hated raking the leaves, too.

 

[WhiningKhan]

Timing is the trickiest thing in this stuff, I've noticed. Damned trees and bushes won't drop their leaves at the same time, so you either need to make multiple passes or gamble and wait for most of the leaves fall down. I tend to favor the latter option, but last few years it has failed as snow & winter has been arriving abruptly after unusually warm autumn (that cursed climate change, grr...). There's maybe a window of a few days where most of the leaves have come down before snow has fallen in which I'd have to whip myself to do the raking, but I'm still learning to identify that window.

This autumn was also very warm, and also the arrival of winter was the most spectacular ever with a record-breaking snowstorm. Buried leaves on the yard don't bother me much this time though, we're moving to another house before spring comes. But, the new house has larger lawn and more trees and probably current inhabitants weren't any quicker with the rake...

 

[digitalwanderer]

We had a huge windstorm earlier last weekend so on Saturday all my leaves were knocked down.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

poopypoo one word "oil"

Waste not want not.