Don't Fall For It!

Fall.  The season and the verb...I dislike them both.  Did you know that autumn is nicknamed fall because of what the leaves do during this time of year?  I have no idea if this is true but I have yet to hear of a better explanation.  Speaking of fall and leaves, did you know that the average mature tree has about 250,000 leaves on it?  Immature trees don't have that many because, well, they are immature and don't know any better.

When we first moved into our house we only had a few trees around so naturally we planted more trees, never thinking that one day they too would become mature and each would drop 250,000 leaves on my lawn.  250,000 - that's a quarter of a million leaves!  PER TREE!!!  Really makes you wish that at least one of them was that elusive money tree.  If money doesn't grow on trees then why do banks have branches?  Sorry, that's one of those stupid jokes I have rattling around in my head and it slipped out via my fingers onto the keyboard.  I'll try not to do that again.  Yea, fat chance.  Did you know that "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?  Again with the jokes...

I spent the better part of the weekend getting rid of approximately 2.5 million leaves using a leaf blower (works well until the wind blows), my lawn tractor (without a vacuum attachment) and the good ole fashion rake.  Utilizing all three methods I was able to get all of the leaves into 18 separate piles of about 138,888 leaves each.  No, I didn't actually count the leaves in the piles because much of the time the wind was blowing, and if I did hand count them the leaves would leave...the leaves would leave...please accept my sincerest apologies.

The next trick is picking up all of the piles and finding somewhere to get rid of them.  Our recycling center, aka the dump here in town will take virtually anything, except brush and leaves.  So I can't dump them at the dump.  I'm even embarrassed at myself for that one.  I could wait for spring but then I will have 18 spots with no grass which will look real attractive.  So if anyone has any suggestions as to where I could make leave of the leaves that would be great.  And at the same time please suggest how I can stop these lousy puns!

My wife and I were talking about some of the trees in the yard.  A couple of them are either dead or dying so we were discussing taking some of the trees down.  She pointed out the trees that she thought should be taken down.  I disagreed with every one of her choices.  Why?  Because she wanted the dead trees cut down, and everyone knows that dead trees don't produce leaves!