A bumper crop of leaves

Two years ago, we saw the largest number of leaves ever in our yard. Well, this year is even bigger. The picture on the top right shows the kids playing around in the leaves before we got started on raking them up. Actually, the kids raked and I used the leaf blower. I find the leaf blower works well when the leaves are scattered. Once you get big piles of leaves, the blower has a harder time. It works with big piles if you turn up the velocity of the air but that also adds to the noise. So, once we get to a certain point, I switch to the rake, too.

In the upper picture on the left, you can see the kids (with Charlie standing guard) finishing up the leaf pile. It looks a lot bigger than the pile from two years ago and that's compared to the kids who have grown (a lot) since then.

We had a very wet spring this year and the winter moths that kept last year's leaf "crop" small were less numerous this year. The crazy part about this year's leaves is that this is only the first part. We're probably going to have to go through this all again around Thanksgiving. There are still a lot of leaves in the trees.

Well, you can't make a big pile of leaves like that and not enjoy it so the last picture on the right shows the kids enjoying themselves after all their hard work. Charlie ended up in the pile, too, but I missed that shot. Charlie especially enjoys these sorts of activities when he sees the cats watching out the window. Then he can go in and tell them about all the fun they missed. [Update - my wife Cindy got some great pictures of Charlie enjoying the leaves - see her blog]