The season advanced, the neighbor’s trees with the giant, dried up leaves finally had enough, the wind picked up, and in a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes between the time I left the house and the time I came back, there were leaves everywhere. In the street. Filling the gutters.

All over our lawn.

In the bushes

On the porch.

The offending trees next door.

It struck me that I have a bizarre perspective on this sort of thing, especially compared to that from my childhood. On the one hand, from the viewpoint of my life here, both in the “here in this particular house” and in the “here in Southern California” frame, this was an unusual and noteworthy event. I made everything look different. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of my much younger self, growing up in the midwest and New England, this was absolutely normal and borderline trivial.
There was a voice shouting in my head, just a bit shocked at my attitude. Perhaps with the tiniest bit of outrage.
It’s. Just. A. Few. Hundred. Leaves. Falling. Onto. The. Grass. In. Fall!!!
In Vermont, by mid-October there were parts of our yard where we would literally be knee-deep in leaves. We had a couple of maple trees that would turn bright red so it all looked very pretty, but it was more of a chore to clean up than an event. The first few hundred leaves falling didn’t mean that a novelty was being presented to us – it simply meant that it was time to get raking.
Yet here in SoCal – not so much, at least not these leaves, today.
I found it somewhat disconcerting, odd, yet couldn’t shake it every time I saw the leaves out there.
So I took the pictures and chose to share the story and my accompanying feelings of disconnect.
Will I start raking the leaves? Nope. That’s why the landlord has gardeners. Not for me to deal with.
Which is also more than a little bit disconcerting.
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