leaf work

Our yard man has steadfastly refused for the past 5 years to include our back driveway/parking court​ in his sphere of duty. (It bears mentioning that this was a stable back when the house was built! The pleasures of old homes!) I've steadfastly refused to let him off the hook, leaving the leaves to pile up till he can't in good conscience leave them unnoticed.

Well, gents, he won. Yesterday I decided to clear all that stuff away, and quickly decided I wasn't going to be the one to do it. The girls and I struck out up and down the street till we found some 10-year-old-ish boys bicycling around. I offered them a few bucks to come to the job. Their parents, from their porch, gave the OK and expressed enthusiasm that their boys were going to earn an honest dollar, but they didn't have a rake. Since we didn't either (we, after all, have a yard man who has a rake), I went to our next-door neighbor, a quiet older man who takes care of his mother, and borrowed *his* rake, took it to the boys, and brought them out back, where they worked for a good hour and a half.

As they worked, Greta and Clara came out to help/hinder, got to know the boys, tried to get them to play, jumped on the trampoline, fussed with a ball. Catherine came out and introduced the first cascarones of spring. (Greta's raison d'etre in spring is cascarones, and she's been talking about them for weeks.) The boys got a couple and exchanged a look that made it clear their victims would be each other.

13 bags of silty leaves, a fairly-well-cleaned-up driveway (I'll handle the remaining silt and leave the bright confetti), an ice-cold Coke for the boys to top it off, and a standing invitation to the trampoline, and I felt much more connected and grounded in our community, our little neighborhood with such a mix of people.