Me Vs. The Leaves, And The Leaves Are Winning

Woke up this morning at a quarter after 6.  I wanted to wake up early so I could rake the front yard, but 6:15 was too early, so I went back to sleep.  I set an alarm for a quarter to 1, which I knew would be way too late to start raking, but it was better to wake up in time for my alma mater's game (ugh) than raking, and if I do wake up early enough, well, then I can.

I woke up at 8:30.  God, I love those long sleeps after I had a long sleep.  And I went out to rake.  I had two-thirds of it done and thus clean last weekend, but since then the winds have been howling.  A couple days ago I saw leaves and a few pop cans blown all over my mostly meticulous yard.

So, do I really go through the entire lawn again?  No.  I did what I estimated was the last third I hang't gone through and did just that.  Well, there were two other areas where a lot of leaves seemed to collect, so I raked those in.  But at some point I just had to call it.  I'm already raking on borrowed time.  This time last year we already had our first snowstorm, so I am lucky to have time to rake leaves, but I don't have forever.  So I just had to do as much as I could, and leave the other leaves on the yard.  Shoot, they say that leaves are good to feed the lawn (after it's mulched), and maybe I shouldn't rake any of them because, I read, that animals live in leaves.  Well, that's my excuse to just stop with the 14 bags I collected.

And now I hope to dispose all of those bags at the county compost site in the morning.  I don't want to; I would rather wake up on my own, provided I wake up in time to get to work tomorrow.  But I want to be completely done with those bags this weekend.  I mean, I haven't even touched the backyard, and the next time I probably will be able to rake there is Thanksgiving, and I had dreams of going to the gym then.  I feel I'm already behind, and I don't want a pile of leaves that I still have to deal with, some of which have been in my parents' garage for over a week.  So I'll sacrifice a late morning in order to complete this part of the chore.  The pains of homeownership.