Fall is beautiful...and NOISY!

I have always loved the abundance of leaves in North Carolina.

The sheer number of them is mind blowing.

It's really quite something to live in a place

that is full of residential and business areas

intermingled with forests and so much foliage.

With all the leaves on the all the trees, however,

come leaves on the ground come fall.

Which, I've come to notice,

lasts from about late September until February sometime.

Okay... autumn itself never lasts that long,

but the falling and cleaning up of leaves certainly does.

Even when the ground is literally covered in them,

like a thick, fragrant, multi-colored carpet,

there are still millions of them left clinging to the trees

and riding through the air on the breeze.

Steven spent a good part of last weekend raking.

Not that you can tell...a couple of breezy days and your efforts

are hardly even noticeable.

The neighbor across the street has a beautifully clean yard.

Of course she, like many other people in the neighborhood,

chase after the trees' offerings with leaf blowers.

Loud leaf blowers.

Incessant leaf blowers.

Annoying leaf blowers.

(And they sometimes fire them up at 7:15 on a Friday morning.

Don't even get me started...)

Everyone drags their leaves to the gutters in front of their houses

and then the town of Cary comes through

a few times during the season

and they suck them up into a big truck.

They vacuum the leaves.

Is this cool or what????

This is a pretty noisy process as well...

Nature may be quiet and peaceful

but the clean up of nature certainly is not.

Steven came down stairs this morning shaking his head.

"I really love fall," he told me. "But it sure is loud."

No doubt.

Here is our side of the street cleaned up.

About 30 minutes later the other side was leaf free as well.

The gutters were, anyway.

We have kicked off the Christmas season in the Wing house!

Scotty and I decorated last weekend.

He found that he'd grown quite a bit since last year

and was able to put more of the tree together on his own.

Maya wasn't really into decorating,

but she sure liked the cinnamon toast I made her

while Scott and I buzzed around and made our home festive.

Here's our jingle mutt.

He's not so sure about these antlers.

He likes Christmas cookies, though.

Happy Holidays, everyone!