Sisyphean Tasks, part I

From approximately 1pm until 4pm this afternoon, I collected the leaves in our yard. I blew them, I raked them, I bagged them, I carried them to the curb before the trash truck came for the week. I was very proud of myself ... until I noticed that at the rate the leaves were falling (about 3 per second ... yes, I counted), I hadn't made much of a dent in it. Here's the "after" photo from about 4pm of a section of yard that was clear around 2:30.

It's not tragic, but it is annoying. Most of the leaves aren't even from "my" trees, but rather have drifted over from my neighbor's heavily forested backyard. She's got 20 mature oak trees in the backyard of a lot that's about 1/4 acre. It's a lot to look after, especially on her own. She does a pretty neat job of it, though.

I love that her yard looks like it was invaded by gigantic mutant moles. And that after hours of raking, you can still barely see her grass.

My one consolation: Liza was incredibly good during most of the raking session, entertaining herself and "helping" occasionally. There was a bit more leaf-throwing than I would have liked, and less useful raking that I had hoped for, but dang, she was cute.

Oh, and despite the fact that my daughter is prone to going outside virtually naked even when there's snow on the ground, today this outfit was weather-appropriate. It was something like 68F when we were raking ... after not much work I was wishing I hadn't packed up all of my shorts for the winter. There's something just fundamentally wrong about raking leaves in a t-shirt and still being too hot.

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And in case you were wondering, it took me two tries to spell "Sisyphus" correctly when I googled it for the link.