Make like a tree

By my best recollection, the fall yard clean-up of my childhood went something like this: My dad would head into the backyard, rake lines in the carpet of leaves and then send us kids out to rake our assigned quadrants into large piles. Each pile had to then be scooped into a bag and dragged somewhere for pickup. I never really paid attention to where those fun piles went after they left the yard, because really, when you're 8 years old, piles of leaves only count when they're easily accessible from your backdoor.

But here in our neighborhood, piles of leaves abound, thanks to a leaf vacuum truck that drives around and weekly sucks whatever you've left on the curb in front of your house into a giant leaf vacuum bag hooked up to a diesel engine. This might be one of the coolest county service vehicles I've ever seen, and I imagine kids all up and down our street probably feel the same way, and race to the window (like Justin and I did) when they hear it coming.

For Abby, this amounts to mom and dad spending an entire afternoon raking and blowing every leaf in both the front and back yards into one enormous pile in front of our house and then waking her up from her nap, zipping her into something warm, and teaching her the fine nuances of leaf pile diving. This kid's got a great life.