Here in the lovely suburbs northwest of Chicago we have a really wonderful fall tradition. In our town we have many large and beautiful deciduous trees. Because we are not permitted to burn our leaves anymore, the local government harasses the hapless citizens into raking the fallen leaves from their yards tidily into piles in the gutter in front of their houses to be collected and recycled as mulch.
Some years this works fine, if there is just enough rain and not too much wind. Not enough rain, and the leaves all blow into the yard across the street. So your leaves are now in the neighbor’s yard, which is good, but everything from the yard behind you now has to be raked out of your yard. (Ideally, if there are enough windy days, the leaves eventually end up in the next town over and become somebody else’s problem altogether.)
Too much rain, and the piles of leaves become clumps of goop resembling papier-mâché. Leaf-mâché, possibly. Or foliage-mâché.
This ick basically stays glued into the gutter until a good hard spring thunderstorm (or “gully-washer”, in the parlance) washes it down into the storm drains and floods the street. Then begin the grand spring traditions of kids riding bikes through the flooded intersections trying to hydroplane and crash dramatically, and the time honored poking of rakes and brooms and hockey sticks into the storm drains to try to get them unclogged.
Anyway, most folks obediently rake their leaves into the gutter, and on the big day, a huge leaf rake truck comes through and sweeps all the little piles down the street (along with the occasional forgotten Herbie-Kerbie recycling bin or poorly anchored mailbox). The rake truck is a snowplow with its blade removed and a huge three-sided basket contraption in its place that pushes all the small piles into fabulously ENORMOUS piles at intersections all over the neighborhood. These piles are so large that when driving in your car you absolutely cannot see over or around them and have no idea whether a kid on a skateboard or a UPS truck will meet you on the other side.
Next, along comes a front-end loader and a pretty red village dump truck. The ENORMOUS piles are scooped up and into the dump trucks, which then zip gaily off down the road to the village's recycling center, sprinkling leaves behind them as they go, like confetti in Mother Nature’s Mardi Gras parade...yay!
This process tickles me every year.
