Shoot The Moose

One thing about living in the Hillwood/West Meade part of Nashville: trees are everywhere. Not the decorative, "we've cut down a forest to buid this subdivision so let's plant a few paltry trees" trees, but true, indigineous foliage. in fact, in my neighborhood, it looks like the houses were planted in the forest for decoration.


This is a wonderful thing in the summertime. If it weren't for the blood-sucking insects, and the stifling humidity, going outside would actually be possible because of all the shade.

However, autumn - for lack of a better word - sucks. Oh, it's beautiful. This year has been particularly spectacular. But those tons of spectacular leaves do something interesting in the fall. They FALL.

First come the acorns. We have three humongous oak trees surrounding our house. The other day, I was outside with my children trying to enjoy the beautiful fall weather. We watched in awe as a flock of blackbirds decided to pay us a visit. Little did we know they would be mocking us.

They flew from oak tree to oak tree, and every time they lit, a shower of acorns would descend upon us. Of course, it was all fun and games until Trillian got hit on the noggin by a few.

After the acorns, the leaves start to fall. Oh, they tease us at first. By the first weekend of autumn, we have a dusting of multi-colored leaves in our yard and driveway. We happily get out the rakes and whistle while we gather up the leaves (while dodging acorn showers) and dump them in the woods behind our house.

This was last weekend. I was feeling pretty good about myself: the yard and driveway looked neat and clean. We had worked hard. We were tired, but it was a good kind of tired. Then I looked up. 90% of the leaves were still on the trees!

The next day, the leaf dusting was back. Then it rained. This is a very bad thing. You see, we live on a hill that is just a little less steep than Mount Krumpet. Wet leaves on a 45-degree concrete driveway might as well be ice. My Scion xB barely made it up the driveway, and I left in my wake wet, twice as slippery, crunched-up leaves. Can't rake 'em when they're wet, they just turn to mud. Might as well go leaf-skiing.

So, the next 4 weekends or so (when it's not raining), I will fight the Battle of the Leaves. My children will cease to think that working with the leaves is fun. So soon, it'll just be me and them. Man against nature.

And Nature toys with me, then laughs in my face. For every ton of leaves I haul (I think I've actually raised the height of my hill with leaves alone over the years), she'll drop 2 more tons. A leaf blower? HA! The wind blows pretty strongly on my hill, always straight back against the direction I'm trying to blow the leaves. They don't move forward, they move straight UP, then back in my face.

No, I must fight this battle the hard way, and I must do it alone.

This, too shall end. When winter arrives, the evil leaves will be gone. Winter in west Meade is glorious.

But don't expect me to get excited in the spring when the buds come out on the trees.