Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Michigan

Okay, I've learned two important things about fall here.

#1: Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground


That's outside our house from a few minutes ago.

Here's how it works: we rake all the leaves into the street. Then, that bulldozer in the distance comes by once a week and pushes them into larger piles. Tomorrow, another truck comes by and picks up all the leaves.

That leaf pile is about three feet deep. And it's about the third time it's been that high.

#2: Blame It On the Rain
I have this reel mower that I just love. It's incredibly satisfying (to me) to quietly mow the lawn with just the click-click-click of the push mower. Plus, it's hard. It's a solid workout by the time I'm done, because the mower is heavy.

I used it from July to September, but that was it, because manual mowers don't cut through wet grass very well (or at all, really), and the grass has been wet for two months straight. There's heavy dew every morning, and it's never warm enough to dry out the grass. Add the rain and you wind up with kind of a swamp, like Candlestick Park during the NFL playoffs.

#3 Rockin' Robin
We have a cherry tree in our backyard. I'm not sure what kind, but it has these tiny tart cherries.

Robins, apparently, love tiny tart cherries.

Here's what I see from my home office window:


There are only a couple of robins in that picture, but there are times when there are 12-15 in just the cherry tree. It's Golden Corral for robins.

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