When we bought our house, the backyard was referred to by the neighbors as “the jungle.” We had 11 trees cut down before we moved in.

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Today (11/4) I counted 35 trees still there. The whole back of the house has yellow glow from the leaves in the back yard. It is very pretty. Then you get out there, rake in hand.

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Mani and Joy really dove into the pile

I feel like a farming family–school stops for raking. There’s 3 leaf rakes, 2 gardening rakes, and usually 4 people raking at a time–or 5. Yesterday, 5 children, and one adult were out in the yard. Yanni, Xay, Mani, Joy and I were all raking at one point.

Etty was learning how to slide–falling off the back of the 3-step baby slide. Xay gave him a pile of leaves to cushion his landing. By nightfall, we had a huge pile of leaves all along the neighbor’s fence. . . and a big pile by the tree that hadn’t made it to the fence yet.
Today we went out earlier–Yanni/Xay taking turns watching out for the baby who was napping. It was around 1:00 P.M.
The yard had a fresh cover of leaves again. We started with the big pile we’d left. We worked on it until Joy got tired of raking–she’d grabbed a good leaf rake to start with–leaving me with a garden rake. I quickly traded with Joy, only to trade with Mani and Xay simultaneously. Joy started playing with the bucket. It was full of old, wet leaves, which Joy dumped at my feet. I put them back in the bucket and convinced Joy to dump them in the large fence pile. Then she went around gathering leaves in the bucket for awhile. Mani raked her own mini piles until we’d finished with yesterday’s pile.

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Now for that fresh coat of leaves.
Xay suggested we use the lawn mower to get them up. I didn’t want to mow the dirt, so I started raking in the back of the yard where there’s no grass. (a legacy of 35 trees!)
Mani and Joy joined me–Mani using the bucket now, “helping Joy”–there are discarded rakes on the ground, and somewhere in there, Xay’s half hour shift is over. I’m contemplating having Yanni and Xay work while I rest, but I don’t’ quit.
Yanni comes out, and we finish cleaning up the back and part of the middle of the yard. We talk trees. Yanni tells me I made her spend time in the boring yard, so she knows all the trees. I am smugly satisfied that our Charlotte Mason objective of knowing all the trees in the yard has paid off, even if she doesn’t appreciate it.
I ask Yanni to get the lawn mower. All she has left to do now is help me empty the lawn bag into the large paper leaf bags. Mani and Joy ask Yanni to help them climb the tree. Mani gets pretty high in the tree, and I send for the camera.
Xay wants to trade shifts with Yanni, and Mani and Joy want to go inside.
I have Xay help me with one bag, and he is runs around behind me snapping pictures, fall/IMG_5467.JPG

until I send him to the Kuneli’s (neighbors) house to play.

I notice my next door neighbor, Nancy, is mowing the front and back yards at the same time. I try this, stopping to dump leaves every few minutes.
My day stretches before me. I have to stop, unfinished, to run to the store so Yanni can make dinner.
I come back from the store and finish.
I had started the day with the promise of a good day’s work, children lightening the load–like farm work. I ended the day with the reality that leaf work is endurance work. It takes staying power.
It was 4:30 before I was finished. I wondered how many leaves would be in the yard the next day.

Note: there were indeed many more leaves the next day. We ended up getting all the leaves up and bagged in over 90 bags by the following weekend. Curtis helped tremendously in the final round of raking, vacuuming, bagging and hauling. The leaves were picked up the day after Curtis’ birthday. Several of the children listed being thankful for leaf pickup day in honor of Thanksgiving.