AND SO IT BEGINS

England has been blessed with an unusually mild Autumn so far, despite a few cold days in the middle of September. Trees have been taking a long time to adorn their Autumnal colours and drop their leaves.

It's the leaves that are starting to concern me. Our garden is flanked by two large, lovely maple trees at either back corner (about 16 feet apart). The thousands of leaves on these trees provide great shade in the summer, and hiding places for squirrels, wood pigeons and other birds. But right now those leaves are starting to drop and coat our entire garden with a layer of soggy gold and brown. I am having visions of drowning in leaves before I finally drag my lazy butt out there to start raking them up.

I think the key will be to rake on a fairly continuous basis. The recycling/garden waste bin is picked up every other week, so I'm trying to judge whether I can fit two weeks' worth of leaves into the bin. I somehow don't think so...I imagine we'll end up with a humungous pile of leaves in the back of the garden that we slowly dispose of over the next month. Yeesh, winter is really on it's way.