Family Man
October is just around the corner that means it won’t be long before trick or treat and carved pumpkins with more missing teeth than my Aunt Mabel.
Worst of all though, I will shortly have to suffer the menace they call...leaves. For the uninitiated, trees, bushes and most plants look absolutely beautiful in Spring with their soft greens, which deepen over the summer months into a riot of colour. The garden looks like a scene from a classic painting. I’m sure if Constable was still alive (although he’d be 170), he would none the less want to paint my garden.
I could admire the brilliance of his work in the Tate Gallery and stand there all day long telling visitors it was my back garden he painted - before security escort me of the premises for impersonating a gallery attendant.
But back to the point in hand. The palette of summer colour soon fades to browns, golds, reds and oranges as autumn sets in and for about 23.48 minutes, my garden looks fantastic. Then, it happens. A small bird flies over my garden carrying a small twig back to its nest, where it is building its home for his new birdy wife to have birdy babies, when the downdraft from the little family man’s wings causes all of the leaves on my trees and bushes to fall to the ground faster than a lead balloon.
This year, however, I am going to get myself prepared. I am going to invest in a super duper set of leaf grabbers with the sole intention of harvesting every last leaf to go into my new compost bin. No leaf is going to get left behind on my watch.
A quick trip to Baytree and after discussing the different leaf picker-upper options on the market, I decide to go for the jumbo leaf and grass rakes - they're like a pair of great big plastic baseball gloves that you use to scoop up the leaves.
I did - following advice from Dean - also invest in a new leaf rake, as Dean said it is a lot easier to scoop up the leaves if they’re all in one place. It all seemed to make sense to me, so I now feel fully prepared to tackle the following aerial bombardment.
It’s now just a waiting game. I have spotters out scouring the skies who are relaying information back to me on the status of the nest-building birdy. Our best guess is that I have just five days left before he makes his fly-past.