Leaves are evil

Our yard has trees. Most of the time, this isn't a problem. Throughout the autumn season, the trees shed their leaves and pine needles (pine straw). The first autumn we were in this house, we raked the yard a couple of times, but grew frustrated that more leaves would fall shortly after we raked. Last year, we just didn't rake. A man came through the neighborhood and asked if we would pay him to rake our yard. We happily obliged. He earned his money that day. The house literally looked abandoned. It was horrible.

This year, we kept up with the raking. We raked it three times before raking it yesterday. Sometimes, I would stop working and stare up at the leaves still attached to the trees and think about how they would fall and need to be raked. It was also lovely to be raking and see a steady parade of leaves falling to the ground in an already raked area. In my opinion, the worst part about raking is the bagging. In order for the yard trash to be picked up by the county, we have to bag it.

Prior to today, we raked the yard manually using rakes. Today, we tried using the leaf blower. That worked fairly well for the leaves, but I still had to go behind Justin and rake the pine needles. The pine needles were a snap once those pesky leaves were gone.

I took these photos this afternoon at about 5:30 p.m. They're kind of dark since the sun was quickly setting. The bare driveway is the biggest change. The leaves had covered the driveway to the point that you literally couldn't tell if you were driving on driveway or yard. Parking on the parking pad was loads of fun, too. I can't count the number of times I had to re-park my car after getting out and realizing I was either on the grass or in the middle of the pad and crooked to the point that it was embarrassing.
We weren't able to completely finish the front yard since that darned sun decided to set. The nerve.

When my sister was here last week, she commented that she thought her yard had a lot of leaves. You can see a distinct line where we stopped raking for the evening. The entire yard and driveway looked like this unraked portion of yard. I promise I'm not exaggerating.

This portion still needs to be raked and bagged. This area is near the road and has smaller leaves. Those little leave are not fun to rake or bag.

I started working in the courtyard since the dogs spend a lot of time out there and I wanted to make sure I had enough time to clean it. Once again, this whole area was covered in leaves.

When we finished for the evening, there were eighteen bags of leaves and pine needles (sixteen from the front yard and two from the courtyard in the back).

I hope we can get the rest of the front yard raked before this cold front comes through tomorrow. The highs for next week are supposed to be in the low to mid 40s. I'm a strong girl, but I do have my limits. I don't work outside in temperatures below fifty.

Edited to add: We did get the yard finished before it got too cold. We did brave some rain sprinkles, but nothing terrible. When we finally finished, we had thirty-eight bags of yard stuff.