Leaf Me Alone

Mayun do I hate doing the leaves. Even the opportunity to play with the leaf-blower can't overcome the sheer tedium of it all.

We have four large trees out along the sidewalk in front of Orgle Manor, three silver maples and an oak of some sort. Each is about 45 or 50 feet tall, and the leaves that they shed are legion. In fact, while I know it is physically impossible, they somehow seem to have dropped more leaves this year than usual. Furthermore, the leaves have absolutely no place to go - the road is banked up on one side and a hedge occupies the other.

I've been at it all morning (leaf collection is a good way to work through an over-indulgence in holiday cheer) and feel as if I've barely made a dent. I've only cleaned up around half the trees, plus a very large pile of leaves still sits on the driveway waiting to be carted out back and dumped in the woods. I've been cajoling the Llama-ettes to help out, but they display all the work ethic of a state highway maintenance crew.

UPDATE: Uh-oh.....

New Scientist reports a worrying new variant as the cosmologists claim that astronomers may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, a mysterious anti gravity force which is thought to be speeding up the expansion of the cosmos.

The damaging allegations are made by Profs Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and James Dent of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, who suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the cosmos to revert to an earlier state when it was more likely to end. "Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life-expectancy of the universe," Prof Krauss tells New Scientist.

*#$&%(&$# the leaves.