How was my weekend? Oakey.

I think we can safely say I am not, repeat, NOT a fan of deciduous trees.

Don’t get me wrong, now. I’ll be the first to admit there is something absolutely awe-inspiring about the fact that I own six majestic hundred-year-old oak trees. They’re mine. They live in my backyard, branches arching gracefully high over the whole property.

The not-so-romantic part of this is when they rain acorns on my roof every night during the fall, sounding for all the world like someone beating bongos on my head when I am trying to sleep goddammit. It was actually pretty scary before I figured out what was making the noise. What the hell, I bought a house haunted by a ghostly percussion band?

The downright horrifying part of it is when the oaks shed all their leaves right on my yard, carpeting it in crackling brown. I am fine with brown carpets, OK, but not the kind I have to rake (and rake and rake and rake) and stuff (and stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff) into yard waste bags (and bags and bags and bags and bags and bags).

Raking is hard. Stuffing is insanity. Poor Saurabh, as the only tall person in our household, has spent all day jumping up and down on piled of leaves stuffed in brown bags to pack them in better. My poor collarbones are hurting from him holding onto my shoulders for support as he did it.

That we had to do the raking-and-stuffing this weekend instead of back at the end of fall last year is our own fault, though. Like overenthusiastic idiots, Saurabh and I decided last fall that we would keep all the leaves we had painstakingly raked over two very long October days, in hope that it would magically turn into leaf mulch if left in a pile over the winter.

Leaf mulch makes an excellent fertiliser. But leaf mulch only happens when the leaf pile is packed very, very densely and kept very, very wet. Our pile met neither of the two conditions.

Instead, our dry, loosely packed pile of leaves was happily blown hither and thither by winter winds over three nearly snow-free months (snow would have covered the pile, anchored it down and wet it, but we had too little this season). So now we’re back where we were in September, viz., the crackly brown carpet stage. Cue a whole weekend of raking and stuffing into big brown bags.

And how many bags we filled! FIFTEEN GIANT 30 GALLON BAGS almost as tall as I am, and we’re not even done yet because a bundle of five yard waste bags has mysteriously gone missing, so we have no bags left. My theory is that the cat next door dragged it away from our yard when we were busy raking-and-stuffing yesterday, Saurabh’s theory is that This Is All Nandini’s Fault Hrrumph. Whatever happened, it was yet another annoying complication at a time we were truly maxed out on annoyances. I mean, can you imagine what it was like to rake-and-stuff that many leaves while keeping a car-crazy toddler from running from the backyard onto the fast-car-infested street out front?

Meanwhile, all our neighbours who were smart enough to only own evergreen trees are hyukking at us while enjoying the beautiful evening, drinking tea on their front porches right in our faces. Somebody needs to put a bullet right through their smiles, God.

There is dirt embedded so deep under my fingernails that I can’t even scrub it out. And I have a job interview on Tuesday! Woe.

This is why I am shaking my scratched, bleeding, dirt-encrusted fist at the sky right now. OOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKSSSSSSS!