Leaf Mountain

leafpileformail
Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Leaves. We love them. Yesterday afternoon was a chilly but still autumn day, and our whole immediate family played all afternoon outside making mountains of leaves, diving into them, crunching them, and generally creating a ruckus in our backyard.

There is nothing like leaves for cheap entertainment. Despite my neighbors' preoccupation with mowing their lawns four times weekly to clean up leaves as they fall on the ground, I plan on leaving mine there for at least a week until all the leaves have departed their tree homes. I like looking from my window at the leaves strewn about in changing patterns on my lawn. I Iike watching my daughter haul piles from one part of our yard to the next and pretending she is a bear hibernating in a leaf cave. My leaf habits probably don't make me a popular person to live next to, but my general peacefulness the other eleven months out of the year make me a stellar neighbor, even if my leaves occasionally blow out of my own yard into the territory of frantic mowers.