Colorful Carpet

Simply put, today's post is about the fall beauty in the process of turning into fall chores -- namely raking.

As beautiful as some of these colors are on the tree, to me they may be even more so on the ground.

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Perhaps it's just the fact that the ground has been green (or at least greenish-brown) for months and months, and seeing it a different color makes it special. Like a blanket of snow, but more colorful.

Or maybe it's because it's easier to pick out the almost endless variety of colors, shapes, textures when they're all on the ground, layered upon a plane.

Perhaps it's that my eyes just appreciate having so much to look at, investigate, where once it was relatively boring (or at least well-known) lawn. Like a plant-packed garden bed, there's so much to see.

I like seeing a blanket of a single type of leaf directly under a tree, but I also really enjoy finding the overlap areas, where the leaves of multiple kinds of trees have mixed together. Trying to identify each leaf -- how many species are represented? -- it's a puzzle game for me.

Sometimes an odd leaf appears, and I have to wonder how far away its parent tree is, how far this leaf has blown.

Mostly though I just enjoy, and wait for the day when the trees have finished dropping. Although there are many on the ground, there are an equal number still on some of the trees.

I'm a rake-once type of gardener, not someone who's out there every evening, or even every few days. Those who are out there every day with the leaf blower, under some strange compulsion to remove every leaf, clearing the driveway while leaves float down around them -- those I do not understand.

Once the trees are bare I'll get to work, but that's a few days off it seems.

So I get to enjoy the colorful carpet a bit more.

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