If You Love Autumn the Way I Love Autumn, You'll Love This Picayune

I’m fully into the leaf-gathering phase of the year. I wish it were a harvest, meaning that the leaves had some value as food, or could be processed into a fibrous wonder material like hemp, or, best of all, transmogrified into gold.

Alas, they are the dead part of a tree, shed annually the way snakes shed their skin, or certain politicians shed their duty to truth and forget about serving their constituents.

I mentioned fallen leaves briefly two Picayunes ago but now the situation is serious and something must be done. First, some back story…

We used to have a dog, Shaggy, who became incontinent daily while we were away. I’d arrive home from work and there’d be a mix of turds and diarrhea on the shag carpeting. Yes, Shaggy would shit on the shag carpeting. If we lived by the sea shore I’d have had a real tongue twister.

What I actually had was one hell of a mess to clean up and I was the guy to do it.

This went on for a couple of weeks, coming home to a smelly, sloppy mess. The dog didn’t like it, and ran to the other room in shame while I scrubbed the carpeting. Otherwise, he seemed healthy.

Finally, we took him to the vet and she asked about changes in diet. My wife realized that maybe it had something to do with the new canned food, which she served hoping he enjoyed it more than the boring kibble he’d eaten the previous twelve years.

It was basically like serving spicy Chipotle burritos to an octogenarian incapable of getting to the toilet on their own, then leaving them alone for the afternoon. Of course there was going to be a mess.

Every morning, after I left for work, my wife had slopped out the wet food for Shaggy, so I wasn’t aware this was going on. Then, in the evening, I arrived home first and dealt with the mess. Despite the lingering smell and my frustrated complaints, my wife never connected the canned food with my front seat tickets to the shit-show.

The fallen leaves aren’t as foul as that, and the leaves certainly aren’t the fault of my wife, but it is something I have to deal with and the problem grows larger each day.

Our previous house was on three acres and had a lot of trees. To deal with the lawn, I had a Montgomery Ward lawn tractor, and I used a tow-behind lawn sweeper for the leaves. The trick with those lawn sweepers is that the canvas bag fills up quickly and you have to dump it somewhere. The mechanized gathering was fun, but dealing with multiple, small piles of leaves was still a chore.

A coworker had the bright idea of burning them, and offered to visit one Saturday to lend a hand.

It seemed a great idea. Like that psychological phenomenon of noticing something once you have one of your own—yellow Volkswagen Bugs is the quintessential example—I suddenly noticed leaf fires all over the country area surrounding us.

That Saturday, the sun was out and the wind was down. It was a perfect day for an open fire.

I drove the tractor back and forth across the lawn and dumped the leaves a safe distance away from both our house and the neighbor’s wilting corn crop. The leaves took to the flame like a drunk takes to whiskey. As fast as I arrived with a load of leaves, my coworker raked them into the fire and the flames did the rest.

We were about twenty minutes in when the fire department arrived.

One of their smaller trucks rolled up the three-hundred foot driveway and continued across the back lawn to the fire. While two firemen doused the flames with water from the truck, another explained to me the various local ordinances I’d violated.

My township required a permit for any kind of open fire, and strictly forbid the burning of leaves.

It turned out that the fires I’d seen nearby were all in the neighboring township which had much more lenient rules.

My township specified a $250 fine but the fireman graciously let me off with a warning.

With my current yard, I have a spot set aside where I pile the leaves. I’ll rake the leaves from every corner of the yard onto a tarp and drag it over, tarp-load after tarp-load, piling them higher and higher. Once done, it’s a 20’ diameter circle of leaves six feet high at the center. Each year, I’m tempted to set the pile ablaze.

Of course, that’s just making a bigger mess. You learn your lessons, like with the canned food for incontinent dogs, or spicy burritos for octogenarians. Safe to say I won’t be starting a leaf fire this year or any year.

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