The kids and I emptied our first batch of leafs into the leaf bins.  It took a lot of convincing to get the kids to allow me to take their leaf pile away.  They didn't understand that there are more leaves yet to fall on the ground.  Many more leaves.  Oh, the leaves.  So we piled them into a sheet and dragged them to the back yard.

Emma got a kick out of me pretending to be Santa Clause.  I asked her what she'd do if she opened a gift from Santa and it was a bunch of leaves.  She said "I'd just make a pile with them."  After we dumped all the leaves, I put Emma and Elliot in the bins to play (actually, my secret plan was to have them compact the leaves).  There is one lesson I learned.  There's a certain thing a father should never hope to hear his little girl yell while playing in the leaf bin.  "I can't find my shoe!"


Amazingly, when the leaves are chopped up, they will take up very little room.  Experts say that chopped leaves take up about 1/20th the space of regular leaves.  We'll see how accurate that is.  I read that you can use a weed-wacker to chop up the leaves so I may give that a whirl (pun intended) while my lawn mower is getting repaired.  It feels really good to recycle my leaves and am anxious to see how we can put them to use in the spring.


Only 2 days after blowing and raking, our front yard is littered with newly fallen leaves.  This is our first home with a heavily wooded lot.  Living in a beautiful neighborhood with mature trees in the fall is quite wonderful - but it does come at a price.  Oh well.  I need something to keep me active to justify all my bad eating.  I only have 17 more days to blame that on the pregnancy.

See more leaf photos on our Facebook page.