Fall in Florida

One thing my nephews and nieces, and even my youngest sisters will never know is the smell of the autumn season as we knew it in the 1950’s. Everybody raked up the dead leaves from the lawn and burned them in a pile out by the curb. The smell at first was not unpleasant, it could immediately transport you to memories of every fall experience you ever had. Experiences like football, hiking, Halloween, and the fear of showing your first report card of the school year to your parents. However as more and more people started cleaning up the leaves in their yards and burning them, the sky would become thick with what we now call ‘pollution’ and all the kids with asthma would begin dropping like flies. So probably that is a custom that we are better off without, but sometimes I do like to take a small pile of leaves that drop from my oak tree and burn them like incense.

Now you may think I wouldn’t have the problem of falling leaves here in the semi-tropical climate of South Florida. You would be wrong. In fact some of the leaves we have to deal with are actually bigger than your head and can give you a concussion if they fall on said head. My oak trees and mahogany tree all drop their leaves at some point during the fall/winter season and grow new leaves just like up north. My biggest problem are my neighbors trees, they all hang over my house and pool and drop their leaves creating a mess. There is even an iguana living in one of those trees that drops huge turds directly into my pool. I don’t let my tenants know this because they really like swimming in there.

So I’ve called a tree service to come and cut my neighbors trees back to the lot line. Hopefully while they are up there the iguana will be scared off to go live in another tree.