I have a huge yard....HUGE...and it's a hill...a steep hill. I used to more or less ignore my beautiful yard, there not being nearly enough hours in a day to tend it properly. But now that I'm retired, I have tackled all kinds of things I didn't used to do, and one of those things is yard work. At about the time I got everything cleaned up last spring, the dandelions came in, and about the time I had a good start on the dandelion problem, it was autumn and the leaves started falling off the trees. As you can see by the photo, we do not have a shortage of trees or leaves. But I have a pretty good rake, so I went for it. About the time I would get one section raked up, there'd be another tree shedding and I'd have to start all over again. So my handy hubby bought a leaf blower and spent one whole Saturday out there blowing leaves around. The yard looked pretty good that Saturday, but by Sunday more leaves had fallen, along with a dusting of snow. After almost a week of wind and rain and a little snow, the sun came out today and, of course, the yard is again about a foot deep in leaves. So I had me one of my brilliant ideas. I got out the leaf blower about a half hour before Handy was due home from work. I figured he'd freak out if he saw me using his newest gas-powered toy. He'd be thinking, what the hell is she doing? She's gonna break that thing! And he'd take it away from me and finish the job. I heard his truck coming down the road and thought thank god he's home...my arms are getting tired. He drove slowly up the driveway, surveying what I had done so far, gave me a big smile and a thumbs up and went in the house! Oh, he's just going in to change his clothes, I thought. He came back out appropriately dressed for yard work and said, "I see you have this under control so I'm going to check my bait pile." And off he went. My plan backfired. I blew leaves until dark. I'm still vibrating, and I'm sure the neighbors hate me.
