Thoughts on Raking and Mowing

By G. E. Shuman

                                                                                          

One recent sunny afternoon I decided to involve myself in my yearly, yes, yearly, effort at raking my lawn.  The grass (beneath the leaves,) really needed mowing, and my mower always complains if I task it with chewing up both leaves and lawn at the same time.  I never rake after mowing, so thought I would act on the seemingly logical idea of doing that chore, before. 

The leaves which fell the previous fall are always there, this time of year, simply because time and ambition normally slip through my otherwise willing fingers.  Most years, as cold weather approaches, I utter one heart-felt prayer for snow to come, before I find time to do the raking. This prayer seems to always be answered, possibly because of the length of time I am willing to wait upon the Lord for it to be answered, and, probably, because it is the one time all year that I pray for snow.  (Shoveling is, if only slightly, worse than raking.)

 ‘Oh dear, where HAS the time gone?’ I say to myself, looking out my window, as the answer to my late-fall prayer falls from the sky.  You simply can’t rake up a six-inch deep covering of maple leaves when they are buried under any amount of snow.  I have always reasoned that it is humanly impossible to do so. 

So, because of this act of God in providing snow, (I can’t believe that I actually blame God for this.) the leaves which fall from my huge maple tree in autumn are often still on my lawn in spring, waiting to be removed on just such a sunny day as the one I began this column describing.  Such was the case this year.  So, on that sunny afternoon I went to the cellar and brought up my big, wide, leaf rake.  (With rakes, push brooms, push mowers, show shovels, serving spoons, and salad tongs, wider means quicker.  With people, wider generally means slower.)    When raking, I always choose that wide rake and my biggest snow shovel to scoop the dry-leaf salad into my wheelbarrow.  For some reason, I always think of cornflakes when I do this.

Now, please understand that each year, simply because, through no credit of my own, God made me a generous person, I, with permission, donate all of my leaves to my neighbor’s growing collection of them in the gully she owns across the street from my house.  (That was a mouthful, and it is starting to be a gully full.)  I feel that this is the least I can do, since I am blessed with a huge maple tree, and she has no such maple of her own.  I, also, would not think to charge her, (my neighbor) for the use of my leaves, which I allow to cover some of her lawn throughout the winter, too.  As I said, she has no maple tree of her own, and, therefore, no free supply of the aforementioned leaves.  (I used the word aforementioned.  I could be a lawyer.)

The very next week, (Why rush things?) after raking and making the donation of the leaves, I got out the lawn mower and gave the yard its first crew cut of the year.  Thankfully, my lawn grows quite slowly, and I do not fertilize it.  I have never been an encourager of any grassy growth, and I never will be.

I don’t feel selfish in confessing that, when I did my recent spring raking, I retrieved as many of my big maple leaves as possible from my neighbor’s lawn.  After all, she did not own the leaves.  I was just loaning them.  Even my generosity can extend only so far.