Among my favorite things about Upper Arlington are the beautiful, mature trees. Those majestic trees bloom with color in the spring and provide refreshing shade in the summer. They even look beautiful for a few weeks of fall. After that… it’s all downhill. I’m talking about the endless piles of fallen leaves! It gives new meaning to the expression buried alive.
In our yard, the leaves start to fall around Labor Day. The problem is that they don’t stop until nearly Christmas. We have to be careful to not get tangled in the Christmas lights as we are rake. Couldn’t these trees come to some agreement about when they will fall? Must they spread it out over 4 months? The maples want to go early, the oak tree prefers to stay late…and so on. Must be poor communication.
At least the lawn companies benefit from the endless leaves. It sounds like an angry swarm of bees when the lawn guys descend on our neighborhood. It’s loud enough when they fire up the mowers and weed whackers in the summer. Once you add the leaf blowers in the fall, it’s time to break out the ear protection for the entire family.
In UA, the leaves are enormous! I bet we have some of the biggest (and heaviest) leaves in Central Ohio. Where’s the award for that? We could have a contest. Bexley, Clintonville, Grandview, Olde Town, Worthington, etc. could all present their prize winning leaf. Hopefully, no one would try to scrub the results.
We are lucky enough to have a wonderful curb-side leaf service. The leaf trucks are a welcome sight, but they always seem to collect the leaves on my street the day before we rake. We get that giant pile of leaves amassed at the curb, but then wait days on end for the truck to return. All week, I cringe as every gust of wind scatters the leaves back across our yard. I do give lots of credit to the people who vacuum the leaves. Are they called leaf suckers? Anyway, they have a tough job and they do it well. My nose starts to run just thinking about it.
My 12 year old son asked me why we can’t just wait to rake until all the leaves have fallen. I begin to rant about dead grass, and too many leaves for the trucks to pick up at once, and being a good neighbor until I realize that he has a point.
I decide to go with the standard mom response: “If you’d stop complaining, we’d almost be finished!” We all know that’s not true.
Happy fall and happy raking to all my Columbus neighbors. If you are like me, you might want to stop by the pharmacy and pick up some Claritin before you get started!