Autumn was always the season that I had a love/hate relationship with. Growing up I loved the cool crisp weather, it was always a welcome break from the humid hell of a summer we usually endured here in Illinois. But at the same time, I would dread it like a visit to the dentist when I knew I had a cavity.
As fortunate as I was to grow up where I did, and I do consider myself truly fortunate — the three fully grown, oak trees in my backyard were a force to be reckoned with in autumn. On a good day, one could clear the backyard in oh, maybe 25 bags.
So you can imagine why it was then that I avoided it like the plague, and how this potential for manual labor would contribute to my love hate relationship with autumn. It was then as you can imagine, highly humorous to my Father when my first home had in its backyard a fully grown sugar maple.
I think that tree only dropped about ten bags of leaves. Try as I might, I could not get my wife to rake them up no matter how many foot rubs that in all likelihood would never happen. Damn, she just would not take the bait.
Keeping this in mind you would wonder why I was walking through an a grove of Maple trees at the Morton Arboretum with my wife and son today. As crazy as this may sound given my previous epic tale of man vs. leaves, I really miss having trees.
Our current home, a cookie cutter track house not without its own charms, has a backyard that is a barren wasteland, grass dominates its landscape and nary a single tree claims it as its home — welcome to suburbia.
So we decided to go see the trees at the Arboretum with hopes of finding some that we would “fall” in love with. The great thing about the Arboretum is that the trees and plants all are tagged with both the common and scientific name. This really makes it easy to get the exact same tree you see.
I had to laugh as we started out expedition, I had forgotten the pen and paper and told Karin that we had to go back to the car to get it. She got this sort of bemused look on her face and said…
“Why don’t we just take a picture of the tag?”
Well duh, sometimes I can be a bit slow in the head. My wife did get a good laugh out of it, and to be honest I found it funny as well. As we left the Arboretum, pictures in hand and visions of the color explosions we would one day see in our backyard, I had a momentary flashback to raking leaves.
But this time I pushed it away, they would no longer bother me — this time “I” was the one with a son, and unlike my Father, I will get him to rake… I wonder if my Dad thought the same thing about me?
Tags: Barren Wasteland, Cavity, Charms, Cookie Cutter, Crisp Weather, Dread, Hell Of A Summer, karin, Likelihood, Maple Trees, Morton Arboretum, Oak Trees, Pen And Paper, Plague, Single Tree, Suburbia, Sugar Maple, Trees And Plants, Visit To The Dentist, Welcome BreakYou must be logged in to post a comment.
