November 7, 2004

Leaves: The Great Divide

The neighborhood’s lawns reflect the great divide between the Dead Leaf Browns and the Dichondra Greens.

It’s time for our annual Leaf Blowing Festival. We live at the edge of a forest of Tulip Poplar trees and each fall they dump millions of leaves on our neighborhood. Coming from Southern California raking and blowing leaves has never been my forte. In fact when we first moved here I deemed this event a “festival” hoping to coax my friends into coming over to help me. But to no avail. There was no fooling them.

The leaves didn’t start to fall this year until the day after the election. With a bit of wind (the last of the hot air I would imagine), they tumbled down with a vengeance. Interestingly, the first lawns to be cleared were those of our few Republican neighbors. The Democrats’ front yards remain strewn with debris. Every so often a gust blows a few “left” leaves onto tidy swaths of green Republican lawn. But it nearly makes a dent. The discards know their place. They seem cemented to the ground for now.

Eventually our neighborhood will be pristine again. All the dead ideas, I mean leaves, will find their way to the country’s compost piles to fertilize a new crop.

Previous Leaf Blowing Festival Stories:
Spores, Spores and More Spores
Turning Over a Few Leaves: The Backstory
A Man and His Leaves

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