Oh not me, not that there aren’t things I could whine about if I so choose. I’m talking about the Leaf Blower Season, which is in full force around these parts. I think the GG cleaned up the leaves *twice* over the weekend. He uses a lawnmower and rake, not a leaf blower, even though we have one. Today it doesn’t look like he did one thing. ’tis the season. I used to do a lot of the raking but, although I enjoy it, it’s one household chore I haven’t been sorry to give up since I embarked on my third career or whatever it is.

We used to have an annual city leaf pickup, where we would rake all of the leaves into the street and the city would come around and scoop them up into dump trucks and haul them off to a compost facility. We don’t do that any more. It wasn’t the most efficiently run system I’ve ever encountered. I can still remember the time they scheduled our second pickup in December and it ended up snowing a foot that day. Those leaves were there until spring. Fortunately the first pickup got the bulk. I still miss the leaf pickup.

Nowadays we are supposed to figure out how to dispose of our leaves ourselves. We have to compost them since burning things in your backyard is largely prohibited, which is a good thing given that if everyone in the Tree City burned all of their leaves, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to breathe. But, as one local wag said, if you have a yard that is knee-deep in leaves and one handy-dandy compost cart that gets picked up once a week, you have a problem. In full disclosure, we somehow have *two* handy-dandy compost carts and a couple of compost heaps in our yard but it’s still a lot of leaves.

A lot of people complain about the whine of leaf-blowers during the fall. They don’t bother me all that much really. I am up and out walking before most people are up and thinking about leaf-blowing and then I am busy and then I am at work all day so I don’t really hear a lot of it. After work today, I noticed the whine. The memory it brought back? The time our cable modem crapped out and Com[pick-yer-expletive] sent a Serial Killer out to replace it. I’m not going to repeat that story [again] tonight. It was creepy at the time but after the SK left, it very quickly turned into black comedy. What I remember most is that one of the times the SK was in the Landfill Dungeon, I was looking out the back door hoping that my neighbor Hans would appear in his back yard. I love the folks who bought his house but I miss that old guy. We share a fairly significant history with him and his wife, children and grandchildren and there were many good times when the kids were young.

Anyway, ’tis the season. Yesterday it was warmer outside than in when we got home from work. Fortunately the GG agreed with that assessment and opened doors instead of jacking up the thermostat. This morning? My lightning app (and then a couple flashes off in the distance) curtailed my 0-skunk-30 prowl. A little cooler this afternoon but still pretty nice out. The S-word is in our future. This Friday. Halloween. Halloween here in the armpit of the GLS is a mixed bag weather-wise. I have stood in the driveway in bare feet on Halloween. I have sent the beach urchins out with winter jackets over their costumes on Halloween. We’ll see what happens. There’s a lot of Polar Vortex scare-mongering floating around these parts.

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