Harvest of Autumn Leaves
Gathering Leaves
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?
Robert Frost
August, 1923
Leaves are falling from the maple that towers over the farm house. This tree has to be as old as the house itself and the yellow and red leaves are beginning to pile in drifts.
Soon I'll be raking my own harvest of leaves, muscles aching and gloved hands sore. Piles will form and winds will scatter them away. But I will win in the end.
They will be piled on the bed of invasive Japanese bamboo (a.k.a. Knotweed) that I am trying to kill off from a part of the lawn. Knotweed and I battled all spring and summer, sometimes I won the battle, but mostly it is winning the war. We'll see how well it does with a thick, impenetrable layer of maple leaves next year.
Of course, my wife discovered she loves soup made from the tender spring shoots of knotweed, so I have to leave a patch for future harvesting. But that's another blog…
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