My first house was made for a leaf waiter. The house faced the west and fronted a road that ran north/south. The house sat on a corner so I had no neighbor on the north side of the house. There were a number of pine trees in the back yard and a few regular leafy trees in the front yard.

As autumn would approach the leaves would fall all over the neighborhood and into my front yard. Most of my neighbors were rakers and they would assembly in their respective yards and rake and bag away.

As a novice leaf waiter, I was not yet comfortable with my method of leaf removal. I would rake the back yard as a diversion to the leaf waiting method. The beauty of back yard raking is that the pine needles didn't need to be bagged. I could just rake the needles up into piles around the pine trees and it looked fine.

The back yard raking was just a ruse to appease the rakers in the neighborhood. What I was really waiting for was a good storm, preferably a Nor'Easter, to come blowing through. The affects of such a storm were immediate and very satisfying…the winds from the north would blow all of my leaves out of my neighborhood and down the street into the other neighbor's yards. Since there was no house to the north of my house, no one's leaves blew into my yard.

Once the storm would pass, my front yard would be remarkably leaf free. My initial entry into the calm peaceful world of being a leaf waiter was smooth and very successful.

God Bless America.

Enjoy!