Fall in the burbs

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Fall is finally gone. What a relief!

When I was a city girl, fall used to mean renting a car and taking a scenic drive to the countryside with the kids to admire the gorgeous fall foliage hues.

I loved the amazing colors that mother nature came up with.

Now that I live in the burbs fall foliage has come to mean something completly different.

It means continuous raking from October to December. Again, raking is quaint for about an hour. Six weeks of it and let me tell you I wish I had hired someone to do the "fall clean-up" as they call it here.

If you're moving to the burbs here as some helpful tips that I learned this past fall.
1. First stop is Home Depot. Get about 20 packs of refuse bags and a huge rake with a rubber handle and plastic teeth. Do not get the wooden one with metal teeth, it will take you about twice as long. Also pick up a pair of gardening gloves. You'll need those because contrary to what you may think you will not only be picking up leaves but deer and dog poop as well!
2. Rake religiously every weekend. If you don't, it builds up, it gets wet and it's much harder to work with.
3. As soon as you hear rain in the forecast, get to work because again wet leaves are messier, heavier and harder to rake and pick up.
4. Bend your needs to pick up the leaves on the ground to put them in the bag. Trust your back will know the difference in the morning.
5. If you leave a pile of wet leaves on your lawn it will make an ugly yellow patch, so don't leave piles.
6. Find out where you need to take your bags and don't leave them in the garage too long. The bags break and you get more cleaning up to do. Sometimes your refuse company will do it for a fee.
7. If you don't have a leaf blower your lawn will never look as good as your neighbor's lawn. Personally I'm ok with that but it's a personal choice.
8. Speaking of choice, picking up your leaves in the fall isn't really a choice it's kind of mandatory the reason being that the leaves don't magically disappear over the winter, they just start decomposing and you have to get rid of that mess in the spring!
Happy raking!

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