Boston is one of those areas on the map, where you have seasons, in fact you really have 4 seasons. There is winter, with pretty much at least one guaranteed snowstorm and several days if not weeks well below freezing, then spring comes along, with an amazing explosion of the vegetation. It is even more effective as over the winter you had almost forgotten how beautiful the natural colors (apart from gray) are. There are days that almost resemble summer with sunshine but it is not really hot, and over the evening the temperatures go back to a very reaonable level, sometimes they even go close to zero, but that is rather the exception. Everybody is getting excited for the summer, which beaches are we going to invade, maybe there is one we have not yet set foot on. Slowly we get used to the rich colors and prepare ourselves for the sometimes steaming hot summer in Boston. The kids are out of school and they spent most of their time outside, chasing adventures with the neighborhood kids.
Summer is there, we go to the pools and the beaches, windows and doors in the house are permanently open a great season to smoke cigars without smoking in the entire house. But all good things must come to an end. The end of the summer as a season becomes quite obvious when the kids start school again (the semester starts at MIT). But the Boston area is merciful and often the first weeks of Fall are beautifully mild; they are often referred to as the Indian summer.
There will be the day when it becomes clear that this is going to be the last BBQ on the terasse with the famous Hamburgerlers and Papi’s tasty special salad. We start to have to think about the windows and the door, they cannot stay open anymore and the first heating kicks. And then fall sets in, the leafs change colors from green to all possible tones of yellow, orange, red and brown and they start falling…. a spectacle to watch but as a home owner you develop a different view because now it is time to work in the garden and every weekend several hour will be spent to clean out the leafs. Of course one could have a company come and do it for us but the work has its nice sides.
Raking the leafs is the most ‘Zen’ activities I know around the house. Snow shoveling comes close, though the temperatures and the time when you have to do it (early morning) usually affect my ‘Zen’ quite a bit. The task of leaf removal is very well defined and it takes long, in fact it is rare that one can do it all in one shot with our garden. On the other hand it is not infinitely long. So one goes out gets the tools and starts to harp with the rake over the ground, in regular and long strokes the leafs are forces into piles. The fewer leafs the less power is required but of course the overall amount of leafs is fixed so with few leafs to clean the number of times you rake the entire garden increases. During the raking I often meet the neighbors and we talk about the usual things. Kids, the garden, the weather, work, the car and whatever else comes up. We have a wonderful set of neighbors and we get along very well with them, at least this is what we think. Often I have lit a fire in the back to burn some of the dead wood of our garden and sometimes we agree when it gets dark to grab a beer and sit around the fire and enjoy a wonderful evening together. Ana and I do this not so rarely, but this I can talk about in another post.
In the first year I put out over 150 leaf bags, I seem to remember that it was close to 170, but over the last years the number of bags has decreased as I have been taking down some of the trees and severely pruning others. I like to take a cigar with me when I rake the leafs together. The weather is mostly beautiful, and the kids are in most cases out in the garden, often they come by and ‘help’ me. Recently though only Blake has the stamina to stay around with me. He actually in general has taken a liking in repeating everything I do. The others will help for a few minutes and then find their friends and enjoy their last days before the winter comes back and the circle closes.
