My fall harvest

Considering the fact that I left my garden behind when I moved, I certainly didn't think I'd have a harvest to write about this fall, but it's all perspective. While I may not have had tomatoes or squash to pick, I was lucky enough to be able to harvest some leaves yesterday.

I never thought too much about a leaf blower until I met the locust tree in our backyard. Its million tiny leaves aren't exactly easy to rake. As luck would have it, my mom recently discovered that a leaf blower she thought didn't work, actually did. Since she'd already bought a replacement, she gave me the old one.

In addition to the locust, our neighbor's have a ginkgo tree that hangs into our yard. It turned yellow a few days ago...

and then dropped most of its leaves.

before

Yesterday afternoon, armed with my new leaf blower, I went to work. I forgot to take pictures under the locust tree, but I sucked up a lot of leaves and twigs there and then moved on to the ginkgo leaves.

during

after

I didn't try too hard to suck up all the ginkgo leaves because there are also seeds all over the ground, and I didn't want to suck them up, too. If you've never been around a ginkgo tree, and I hadn't until we moved here, let me tell you about the smell. Vomit. That's what the ginkgo smells like. I think it's the seeds, and it got worse the riper they got. Beautiful tree, but I'm glad it's not closer to my house.

Anyway, between the locust and the ginkgo, I got four bags of leaves, which are now safely tucked away, starting their transformation to leaf mold.

They're hiding under my deck, since I don't have any other corners to stash them in.