all the leaves are brown

We need to move out of this area, for no other reason than the *&#!cking leaf-blowers. Whatever happened to a damn rake? I try to do dissertation writing at home in the afternoon when baby-j takes his monster-long naps, which is always the time when the landscaping dudes (our landlord hires them to come to the house twice a week) decide to blow the leaves around. It’s loud and difficult to focus.

As so this morning, I drop baby-j off at the pre-school at my work, settle into my empty office with a cup of coffee in hand, prepared to work hard for a couple hours, and the whirring starts up. I look out my office window, and find more leaf-blower dudes, different ones, with bigger and louder equipment… I mean, they have a whole campus of leaves to blow into plastic bags.

Not to mention the fact that it’s late November. There are *supposed* to be orange and yellow leaves on the ground. A bare green lawn under naked trees seems somehow unnatural.