Chilly Days, Leaves, and Adjusting to Nature’s Rhythm

Written November 12, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

It’s so darn chilly today, but I must push myself to clean the leaves. The windy and rainy days made our front yard cluttered with leaves. This is what happens when I skip working on collecting leaves.

The hurricane gave Nashville a couple of chilly days. It has been so cold today that I almost wanted to stay inside the house. I waited a bit longer, hoping the temperature would be more tolerable. After I had a brain stroke, I lost control of my inner thermoregulation system. My skin feels the heat or chills more profoundly than before my brain stroke. I will adjust my schedule for outside chores since external conditions impact me more. If I didn’t have to finish the task today, I would instead want to complete the task in a better condition. 

Just like I hoped, a few hours improved the temperature. It seemed much warmer after a few hours. The lovely sunlight dried up the leaves enough to vacuum easily when I got outside. The wet leaves could be nasty sometimes; they get clogged in our leaf vacuum cleaner in the middle of the cleaning. 

On a day like this, I tweaked my schedule. I can still do the other chores in the house before doing any outside chores. I still have several tasks I need to complete besides the leaf vacuuming today. 

The several consecutive warm and humid rainy days confused our lawn with the season. They seemed much longer than a few weeks ago. It needs to be longer to mow the lawn, but I need to see how long it gets. 

I plan to do one more round of leave vacuuming this Thursday. I’ve checked the weather forecast. It will likely be another chilling morning. Luckily, no rain is predicted between now and then. The trees in front of our house lost a substantial amount of trees, hinting that my leaf vacuuming task will end soon.

Fall Maintenance Chronicles: Tackling Leaves, Hurricanes, and a Leaf-Vacation in Nashville

Written November 7, 2024

Hello Dear Readers,

Near Thanksgiving day, our trees start to lose their dry clothing. They dropped so many leaves that there were so many to vacuum today. There were more leaves this year. A recent Hurricane brought a few windy days, and the wind carried the leaves from our neighbors. Due to our garbage bin being full of leaves from Tuesday’s collection session, I elected to skip today’s session as there’s nowhere to put them.  

Since October, we have had hurricane after hurricane. Hurricanes don’t hit Nashville directly, but our weather seems to sing along with them. We get the rain and wind. There is rain forecasted for this weekend, which may make leaf collection next week a bit more difficult, but I’ll do what I can.

In the future, we may want to get an extra garbage bin to hold a bag to dump leaves into.  We have some bags I could use, but throwing the leaves into an unsupported bag would be a lot of trouble.  So, today will be my vacation from leaf gathering, and I may have to pay for it next week.  Maybe I’ll be lucky, and the wind will magically blow all our leaves away without blowing new ones in to replace them.

Leaf vacuuming is one necessary maintenance task. When old leaves turn into soil, it creates unwanted deposits between concrete. Despite my work, there were weeds on the driveway. We had to weed them and clear them out with a power washer before damaging our driveway further. Besides, these dry trees make our front yard messy, so I want to keep them as neat as possible. 

Fortunately, leaf vacuuming is not as hard as lawn mowing, and the weather is more tolerable now than in summer. The days have gotten shooter, and winter will show up quickly. The trees in the backyard have lost most of their tree already. There will be 2-3 weeks of leaf vacuuming. Of course, we may get a rare snowstorm, which hit us every year for all 6 years we lived in Nashville. For now, I will enjoy this leaf vacation.