One of the beautiful things about fall is raking the leaves. I stopped this week to think about how the leaves turn colors. I'm terrible at chemistry, as I mentioned before, but I know that people have studied it and found out that the leaves get less and less water and prepare for winter, and as they do so the different chemicals bring out different colors. I have some general idea of that phenomenon, but then this week I realized that it is different than leaves that just die. When leaves die, they just turn brown and crispy, without the fireworks before falling off.
So I raked a lot of leaves. I know some people wait for all the leaves to fall of the trees to be more efficient in their raking, but I didn't do that this year. I went out and raked whenever I couldn't see the driveway anymore. And I'll have to do it again before winter hits and they're not so dry and easy to take off the driveway with one brisk sweep of the rake.
And I'm also excited about having so many leaves for our compost heap. It's getting pretty big, so I'm hoping it will be big enough to do some serious composting before spring.