Dead leaves and the dirty ground
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006Today is halloween. Halloween is apparently a somewhat bigger event here than England. In fact I’d wager second only to Thanksgiving from what I have experienced so far of the various holidays. Quite ironic really, for a nation half comprised of right wing religious fanatics.
To celebrate we now have a ghoul hanging from our tree. When you make a noise or touch him his eyes glow red and he screams out a blood curdling cry. He also shakes furiously like, well like a ghoul hung from a tree actually. Wendi also carved some pumpkins for our step:
All this combined with our green porch light should be suitably scary for the evenings proceedings. In light of which I decided to remove the leaves from our garden today. Our stupidly big maple tree out front has decided it should honour the seasons name (’fall’ for brit readers) and shed 192 tons of leaves. I felt small children may be swallowed whole by the sea of matter. That coupled with the most likely subsequent threat of leaf based lawsuits was an unappealing prospect.
Before I began the scene looked something like this:
Several hours and 7 bin liners later, we had the much more litigatory friendly:
My legs, arm, back, head, heck even my toes are now sore from hours of stuffing leaves in bags. I fear tomorrow I will regret my ‘yeah yeah ill clear the leaves all in one go’ comment to Wendi over a week ago when she suggested I clean up small amounts each day.
In fact I should have just left the leaves and had the visiting trick or treaters lend a hand. Then they would know true terror isn’t a battery powered tree ghoul, but hours of back breaking garden work.