Leafing Through Life

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library – Jorge Luis Borges

The day was dry and clear, and it appeared we had few more dry days ahead of us, so I decided to go out into the back yard and rake some leaves. I say “some” because I’m not too finicky. It doesn’t bother me to get most of them and leave the rest to rot and return what few nutrients they may contain back to the earth from which they sprang.

The circle of life. That’s what it’s called. The trees receive their moisture from the rains that water the earth. Water and nutrients, for the most part, are gobbled up by the roots and get converted into trunk, branch, and foliage cells. The leaves open wide and suck in the sunshine, converting those golden rays into something – God only knows what. They also draw in the carbon dioxide the plant needs, and exhales the oxygen we lunged types need.

When the leaves fall in autumn, I find myself wondering how trees breathe during the winter. The foliage is gone. Do they simply hold their breath for several months while the sun swings low, the air chills, and the rains turn to snow and ice?

Early in life, I never thought much about trees. I would complain if I had to duck under low branches while mowing (and not always successfully either, as my poor scarred noggin will affirm). We have a gorgeous maple tree in the front yard that makes mowing a challenge, not for low branches, but because it is located in such a place that makes mowing more difficult (for my somewhat obsessive/compulsive nature). It disrupts my mowing pattern and disturbs my peace worse than the thrumming of the lawnmower’s engine.

But as I have aged, I find I don’t look at trees the same way as I once did. I’ve come to appreciate them more and more. Yes, in fall I need to rake leaves, but only because it is my nature to keep the floor of the yard clean and neat. The fault for raking lies not with the tree (doing what trees do in autumn), but with me. The problem lies in MY nature, not that of the tree.

I suspect that when I rake those dried and curling corpses from around the trees from which they fell, I am removing much of what gives life to that tree and the world around it. I wonder how many worms watch me rake and think, “There goes supper!” I wonder how many creepy crawlies watch me scrape the ground (in horror) as I destroy their homes and hiding places.

Of course, out of concern for the well-being of the trees, lawn, and other plants (having removed their meals for the year), I know come spring I will head down to the store and buy a bag of chemicals I’ll have to put down (for a healthier, more luscious yard). It’s more labor and, what’s worse, the vegetation will be dining on that store-bought stuff and thinking it tastes like, um, something else.

So we come full circle. The fertilizer I put down during the vernal time of year has come back to haunt me as vegetative cast-offs. I can choose to leave them to rot (and allow nature to take its course), or I can rake them up in what is probably one of the world’s greatest acts of stupidity (not counting war). Well, I’ve never let stupidity stop me in the past and I’m not about to start now!

So off I go to rake, rake, rake / I do it all for goodness sake / I’d be better off to jump in a lake / or hit the kitchen to bake a cake / but messy yards I cannot take / so off I go to rake, rake, rake!

I don’t know if raking (or not) is good or bad. It gets me out of the house and it gets me moving, so that’s not too bad a thing.

In due season I will go the way of all flesh; then it will be my turn to fertilize the earth and someone else can choose to rake me up (or leaf me alone), and the trees will have the last laugh here in this, our valley.