I rake leaves all day. I rake big piles onto an enormous blue tarp, and then I drag the tarp to the street where I dump the leaves. In our town, a truck comes by to suck up the leaves every week in autumn. It’s amusing to watch this enormous vacuum cleaner snout emerge from the truck.
But raking. It’s peaceful, rhythmic work. I love verbs with a “k” sound, too. Rake comes from the German word that means “to heap up” and the Old Norse that meant “to shave or scrape.” I’m scraping up the lawn into heaps. I’m making a clean canvas for winter snow.
I haven’t purchased a leaf blower yet, so there’s no noise except the old-fashioned metal rake heaping the leaves and acorns up. I enjoy the warmer day, the light breeze, the bright sun, the blue sky, and the smell of leaves now piled up all around me. Every so often, I’ll check election results, but then I return to the ancient, slow task of raking.
