Fifty-Four Bags of Pine Needles

Retirement is not all about lounging around; I’ll have you know! Yesterday we spend several hours raking up and bagging about seven years worth of pine needles, dead leaves and pine cones that had accumulated around the yard.   Rob’s dad was the grand raker-upper, keeping things in order, making sure that the dry underbrush didn’t create a fire hazard.  He’s been gone about 3 ½ years now and we realized that it had been several years prior to his passing that he was able to do much raking.

Living in the woods, under what gardeners call, “dappled sunlight,” not much grows in the soil beneath the towering trees.  That’s why the Keep Tahoe Blue people, (and we are members in good standing- we even have our name listed in their quarterly brochure in size 7 font,) give lots of good advice about native plants for your yard.  Planting those native plants will be a project down the road a bit. Clearing the way, was yesterday's job. 

Our original plan was to rake and bag up about 10 bags worth, then stop.  But since we were already dirty, and sweaty, and it was a Saturday, so the beaches would be full of tourists--- (see, now we think of ourselves as locals,) we just kept going, and going and going.

I felt like an ancient, creaky, sore, old fart when we were done.  After a long cool shower, some ibuprofen and a couple of gin and tonics, I was back to my normal self—an old fart still, but not so creaky and sore.