Renewing Vows, With Rakes

Go to any search engine and type in "renewing vows" and you'll find plenty of ideas for throwing what to me is mainly an excuse for a big party and a trip to an exotic locale. Many couples who have been married for decades like to do these renewals, as if the warranty on their marriage is about to expire and they'd better do something about it quick.

MH and I, who have been married for decades, aren't ones for big parties or exotic locales. We do things our own way. We renew our vows every Autumn when we must go into the backyard and tackle raking the fallen leaves.

Maple leaves, before the fall (Margo D. Beller)

With all the rain we had during the last weeks of summer, MH and I were not sure what we would get in the way of autumn color. When things did finally begin to color, they seemed patchy and uneven. Many trees stayed full of green leaves. But then it got cold and it seemed almost overnight the leaves started to turn. For about a week we had intense color that made it a joy to be outside.

That changed very recently when the winds started blowing and we had a brief warmup. There are now many more bare trees, or trees where the leaves are shriveled and brown, the overwhelming color.

I had to rake pods to the curb last year but not this year!
(Margo D. Beller)

When we first moved here and realized what we had on our property, we didn't know what to do with all the pods that fell from the one female black locust tree in our front yard (the other three are males; all were planted by our town, which is responsible for their maintenance). I collected them in an old garbage pail and kept it in a back corner of the property, where I now have my compost pile. What a relief to learn the next year we could put them at the curb with the leaves!

This year, there are few pods on the front lawn and the bulk of the leaves are in the back. We used to use a bed sheet in our raking but now use a very large tarp, which means fewer but heavier trips to the curb.

The other day was our first foray into this year's raking (this does not count when MH used his mower for the last time to mulch the leaves, or I collected leaves in a leaf vac to put into compost). We have a routine. I take out the blower we bought after the first year of raking and herd the leaves into piles. MH comes out with his gloves and rake and starts pulling other leaves from the edges to those piles. I grab my own rake and start putting the piles into the tarp we've spread out. He goes to the opposite side of the tarp from where I work and does the same. We hold down the tarp edges with our feet to get as many leaves in as we can. I push leaves into the center to make room for more. By the time we decide it can take no more, we have a heavy load to drag to the front of our house.

Befitting our personalities, he quietly does his job while I noisily try to get him to do something to, I think, make the process more efficient. He listens and agrees about half the time.

Black-capped chickadee (Margo D. Beller)

As we work there are birds calling around us, waiting in the dogwood tree or the shrubs to see if we will bother them as they fly to the feeders we work near. One black-capped chickadee has a more metallic-sounding call. "Could that be a Carolina-blackcap hybrid?" MH asks. Possibly, I say. Carolina chickadees tend to be in the southern part of New Jersey but who knows anymore as birds once considered "southern" now become more common up here.

Same with the raven we hear croaking its call as it flies overhead. Ravens used to be found in high elevations but we've been hearing them more often in our neighborhood, which is only about 400 feet above sea level. We stop to look for it and see its wide, spade-like tail as it sails by. I am impressed by MH. He has become more of a birder now after all our years together. Although most of the time he says he can't identify even the most common of birds without my help, there are some he now knows after being willing to listen to their calls. Having more eyes and ears out in the field is a great help to me.

Brook color (Margo D. Beller)

Otherwise, we don't talk much until we get to the curb and then we yell at each other if one's movements threatens to unbalance the other. I notice another older couple up the street are using their rakes to push leaves to the curb. They don't use a blower. They may not even use a tarp. They seem to have steel arms. If they hear me yell at MH they politely ignore it. They don't make a sound and work in sync. They're a partnership, too.

I think of how I used to do a lot myself. But now, while I can rake, use the blower (which shakes me painfully) and even put leaves into a tarp, there is no way I can drag down a heavy, leaf-laden tarp or empty it alone anymore. For that, as with so many things, I need my partner.

As if to mock us, the day after we finish our raking the wind blows and the lawn becomes more littered than it was before. Way too many leaves to use the mower on them. We'll just wait for the rest to come down, go out with rakes and tarp and then finish the job for another year. Until then, there's no rush.