314/365 Killing me slowly

314/365 Killing me slowly
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

...one leaf at a time.

3rd day of raking and not much to show for it. The primary reason for this is the giant oak tree in our neighbor's yard which insists on holding its leaves longer than any other tree in the neighborhood. Last year, it didn't drop all its leaves until after several snowfalls and the last yard waste pick-up for the year.

It doesn't look like it will be much different this year but I keep raking because we're trying to get as much taken away by the street vacuuming which is supposed to start this week (and starts in our neighborhood).

312/365 Leaf Spiral

312/365 Leaf Spiral
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

and also part of my art every day month exercise.

272/365 Unwanted Bounty

272/365 Unwanted Bounty
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

It would have been nice if the squirrels would have taken the acorns rather than eat all our pears. Little F'ers.

Apparently the trees produce acorns in cycles, theoretically to slowly starve out the population of critters so that on the big production years, they can't possibly consume all the seeds, thereby allowing more trees to propagate. This is clearly one of those years, but it doesn't seem like they needed to go through the trouble since, unfortunately for us, the squirrels have moved on to bigger and better things.

Down the street from us, it's like there's a thick layer of sawdust in the road from all the acorns that have fallen and been crushed by the passing cars. And then there's me in the backyard, left raking, shoveling and scooping up by hand for more hours than I care to count.

244/365 Keepin' It Reel

244/365 Keepin' It Reel
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

While I don't mind that we're not burning fossil fuels to mow our lawn, the main reason we have a reel mower is because I can't be trusted to maintain a gasoline-powered engine.

219/365 Wacked

219/365 Wacked
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Ketchup 1: Crap we found under the deck

Crap we found under the deck
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

So a few weeks ago we finally found some time to do some yardwork. We were planning on just doing a first pass of leaf raking, but once I got going on the leaves under the deck, I pretty much had to clear out all the other crap that was down there.

Somehow I thought this post was going to be more interesting. Oh well.

For what it's worth, we're keeping the crab.