Leaves! Seriously!

Well, believe it or not, I have discovered foliage that I despise more than the dreadful water oak leaf and acorn. It is the magnolia leaf. This beast is nearly impossible to tame. While oak leaves blow or rake neatly into piles which can then easily be bagged or vacuumed, the magnolia leaf defies almost every attempt at corralling it. Trying to blow them is frustrating as some of them have the ability to cling to the concrete and laugh at you when you try to move them. Raking them into a pile is initially encouraging as you can be quite successful at this, but your happiness will end there. You cannot vacuum these tablets of fauna because they are too big and clog and burn up the motor. Using your rake and hand to bag is a possibility, but when you're 7 months pregnant, the thought of bending over that many times is enough to make you give up before you even begin. So you pull out the pitchfork. Why not? It works great with everything else, and it actually works OK with the magnolia leaves, but you spend half your time sweeping the leaves off of the forks because you pierce them and you then can't pick up any other leaves like that with the pitchfork full of pierced leaves. So nearly every other time, you are pushing those leaves off, and invariably, it is not the fresh leaves that get stuck, but the nasty, moist ones that have been sitting at the bottom of the pile, and, of course, you have most likely forgotten to put on your gloves, so you have to touch this stuff. And then you think there must be a dead animal in there or something because the smell is just wretched, but then you realize that you're standing beside your garbage can, and that dead animal smells remarkably similar to your son's poopy diaper, and you relax just a bit after that. But you continue silently cussing the damn magnolia leaves because you just hate them that much. And then, when the bag you are filling comes off the frame just as you are about to drop a big pitchforkful of leaves into it, you actually scream, "Damnit!" out loud because you can no longer control the anger inside you, and you convince yourself that it's OK if the neighbors know because they have magnolia trees in their yards, so surely they will understand, even though they are all very old. But you perservere. You get your bags filled, and your yard looks great. Despite your anal retentiveness, you are able to look past the five or ten leaves left on the driveway because you have removed 99.99% of the rest, and sometimes that just has to be good enough. You feel good about yourself. You have accomplished something and can rest well that evening.

Then you come home from work less than 24 hours later and, despite the void inside you, you can't even tell that you lost a piece of your soul yesterday bagging those damn leaves because there are just as many damn leaves on the driveway now!! You contemplate purchasing a chain saw because certainly the fine for cutting down a 60" diameter tree in the middle of the city cannot be as great as the cost of spending time in a mental hospital due to the psychiatric break you're about to go through!

But ooohhh! Look at the pretty flowers!