Raking Up is Hard to Do

Eric and I have been spoiled by living in an apartment for too long.  We've gone years without having to shovel snow, mow lawns, clear branches, capture squirrels, and rake leaves.
(P.S. My parents had flying squirrels break into their attic this year.  Who knew flying squirrels lived in New England!?  Not this little red head.)

Now that we're homeowners, the golden days of calling maintenance whenever we have a problem are over.

Which is why, as of three days ago, our lawn still looked like this:

I'm not big on lawns.  I don't particularly care if my grass is green or not.  I don't even particularly care if we have grass as long as Madeline has someplace to play, and I have someplace to plant things.  If it were completely up to me, I would probably just let the leaves rot happily in my yard.

As a homeowner, however, I'm quickly learning the pressure of being a good neighbor.   As of two weeks ago, our neighbors' lawns all looked like this:

(Minus the William and Kate unfortunately.)

The guilt bubbled up inside me as I watched the wind carrying our leaves onto their previously pristine lawns on Saturday afternoon.  It's not like any of our neighbors complained, (unlike a friend of mine who came home from work to find her neighbor blowing all of the leaves from her newly-raked property back onto my friend's yet-to-be-raked lawn.) but we're new to the neighborhood.  I don't want everyone thinking, "Those new A-holes across the street haven't raked their lawn yet!  Let's shun them at next Labor Day's block party."

Therefore, Eric finally took the initiative and raked up all of our leaves on Sunday.  We have a tiny yard, and it didn't look like we had a lot of leaves, but we somehow managed to fill over 12 leaf bags.  Still, I didn't think it was soooo bad.  

Of course, this could be due to the fact that Eric did most of the work, and I only came out to help at the end once all the piles had been formed.

 Madeline did not help at all.  I guess babies are too young to rake, or something....

Instead she spent most of her time playing on her swing set, giving her Mumma heart attacks every five seconds by doing things she wasn't supposed to do, and rolling around on the unused leaf bags. (Which, she was also not supposed to do.)  

Still, it's nice to know that someday raking the lawn will be partially her responsibility as well.  Teenagers make great manual laborers.

Eric declared raking as the worst of all yard maintenance.  Still, I have a feeling he'll be saying the same thing about shoveling come the first major blizzard.  And who knows how he'll feel about weeding and planting once I attempt to get my gardens in the ground this spring.

It's a good thing we're not farmers.