For the last two days I have been raking the enormous amount of oak leaves that have littered my yard since August. Of course the falling of leaves is to be expected and in the normal course of things the leaves float gently to the ground and lay close to the mother tree. Katrina savagedly stripped the trees bare scattering their leaves in all directions. Looking at the job that lay ahead of me I thought to myself, "Okay old girl just take little baby steps!" I should tell you that I have always loved everything to do with a yard and had personally done all the work myself .... so why should tackling this huge mess be any different. I raked and bagged, raked and bagged and the first day I saw I had made a dent. So when I awoke yesterday morning with plans to finish I walked in a painful bent forward stance. My neck, shoulders and back were literally screaming from the pain. Determined I went out anyway and began raking as I knew that if I didn't keep moving that I would probably freeze in my present condition. And so .... I continued raking and bagging and carrying the black bags to the curb for pick up. In the last two weeks I have filled nearly a hundred bags. I joke with my daughters that they or someone are going to find my dead body face down in a pile of leaves. Their consolation will be that I was doing what I love to do.

Something that I should also mention were the biting gnats. The leaves were damp and were a perfect place for breeding gnats. Usually it would be mosquitoes. Gnats are a pest that do not care where they bite you. I even managed to swallow a few of them.

When I awoke this morning all the soreness was gone. The only reminder that I had of doing such hard work were small red gnat bites all over my arms.

The yard looks beautiful!