The old oak trees

My neighbors shamed into starting on the leaves this afternoon. The old guy across the street had his ride on power leaf destroyer out and the young guy next door started raking and burning so I got the trusty rake out as well. Those of you who know about my snakes and spiders phobia here will be impressed that I plugged away until well after dark. I got depressingly little done in terms of square footage.

I have this complicated process. I'm too freaked out about burning the place down with all the trees on the property that I only build a small fire compared to the mountainous pile he had going next door. Then I kept raking away from the fire and brought the leaves over in a big basket and dumped them on. It's slow but orderly, only there's a lot of leaves. I figure I'll be done about spring time.

The squirrels should be happy though. I undercovered a lot of acorns. They've been busy building nests. I have one little family about three trees out from the screen porch. There's a long split in the tree and it appears six of them are living in it. I saw the big one chewing off little branches that still had green leaves on them and carrying them inside. Yesterday, I saw all the smaller ones running around and around on the outside of the tree.

There was also a major squirrel fight over territory a couple of days ago. One squirrel was chasing the other up and down all the trees and at one point, the loser literally flew about 25 feet into the next tree, scrambled down and tore across the lawns in about 2 and half seconds. It happened so fast even the victorious squirrel looked a little confused as he sat on his branch looking around to see where the other guy went.