Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Peanut Gallery

Mom sits in a comfy fuzzy-material-upholstered rocker and watches me do yard work.

I was out raking the leaves in the yard. In this area, we either rake leaves to the edge of the road (good for front lawns) and the local highway department comes along with a huge powerful vacuum that sucks them up and tosses them into a large box mounted in the bay of a dumptruck. Or, you buy big recyclable paper bags — think old-style grocery bags, only much much bigger — and put the leaves in those. The same crew that does the sucking also picks these up and takes them with the others to the great leaf graveyard (aka town compost pile). The bags are a good solution for back lawns.

While I'm still waiting for the maple tree in the back to shed, the birch tree has dropped all of its leaves, so I was working away raking and stuffing them into the bags. When the leaves got to the top, I'd push them down with my hand and compact them to make more room. My final trick was to fold over the top and sit on the bag, using my weight to smush them even further.

As I'm bobbing up and down like I'm on a hippity hop, I see my mom looking at me from the window and she's clapping. Some applause from the peanut gallery. Thank you, thank you very much. I'll be here all week.

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