It's pretty hard to be melancholy on a day like today - a perfect Indian summer day in early November - warm enough for shirt sleeves, and just misty enough to mimic a Monet as it softens the fall into pastels.

Still, I wanted to be, and as I faced the size the task of removing the leaves from the backyard was likely to be, and realized that if I didn't do it, it wasn't going to get done, and there would be no one to help me, I was feeling pretty darned down, and pretty lonely.

I looked around for reasons to delay getting started, but by 9:00 a.m., I'd already done my e-mail, done the laundry, had breakfast, washed the dishes, swept up the kitchen, and polished off two pots of coffee (it's a really small pot, ok?), and I had run out of reasons to procrastinate. If I wanted to be done early enough to go up and visit my mother in the nursing home, I had to start. So, out I went, armed with rake, leaf blower, and the ultimate weapon - my handy, dandy garden tractor.

In the end, while I did use the rake and leaf blower for detail work, I abandoned the one pile of leaves I'd built to Hudson, and I attacked the rest of the yard with the tractor.


Trying to position these pictures in this posting has just cost me the entire blog entry, as the editor ate all the original text. Now I'd have to dredge the far reaches of my aging memory to remember how I told you that I found all the missing dog poop with the tractor wheels - SPLAT! - and the woeful event of happening upon the unfortunate mouse whose scurry wasn't hurried enough to save him from the mower blades. I can't do that, so I guess you'll just have to guess about those things. It was a warm day, not nearly as autumnal as the pictures suggest. Today is crisper. I'm going out to walk to get the dose of refreshing fall air that was denied to me yesterday. My yard, despite last night's unseasonal thunder storm, remains clean and clear. It is a good feeling of a job well done.