It's Still Fall Here

DP and I have not done much with yard maintenance this fall. We're pretty hands off in general--no chemicals, little lawn mowing except when necessary, no intensive gardening. Our yard is acceptable but not the neatest one on the block. That would be hard--a neighbor up the street almost sits outside as temperatures drop waiting to catch the first leaf before it falls. I'm sure our lawn drives him nuts.

Not that I didn't rake this year. I did. Several times. So the kids could jump in the piles. I never put the piles in bags. The leaves are still in the yard, mostly around our rock wall. We have the only fall leaves left in Connecticut. And sometimes I feel guilty about this--it looks messy compared to the still green lawns around us. But then I remember, we have the natural yard. It is unnatural to have green grass and no leaves at this time of year. We've gotten so accustomed to immaculate yards that we forget that it's bizarre, really.

And today I was never so happy to have leaves in the yard. Because for an hour the kids played in them. Baking. They used two empty plastic pots we had for herbs and filled them again and again with leaves, twigs, bark, pine cones, and the like. One was a chocolate-cherry pie with sauce. Another was "duck soup," from a recent episode of their now-favorite tv show Little Bear. DS went back and forth probably 100 times piling it with "salt." They kept filling and refilling, working together and sharing. And we all sat down on the no longer frozen, leaf-covered ground and ate together with twig forks and spoons.

A perfect fall day . . . in January.