Deep in the Leaves

Sunrise on top of Chiques Rock, overlooking the Susquehanna River, just outside of Marietta.


The first of many leaf pick-ups is tomorrow in Marietta. I'd estimate that we have about 14 giant bags of leaves. My personal record is just over 20 bags in one session.

In the past, leaf raking was solely my responsibility and I spent many, many hours cleaning up the yard each Fall. The one thing I've enjoyed this Fall is that Barb and I do everything together. I enjoy working with Barb. I think we make a great team.

Yesterday we took turns raking the yard, switching off whenever we got winded. Now we have a giant pile of wet leaves waiting for both of us to bag today.

The physical work, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is invigorating and makes me feel great - as long as I don't overdue it. But regardless of how good the physical exercise makes me feel while I'm working, afterwords it's pretty much a guarantee that I'll be exhausted. But as long as I keep at it, my endurance seems to improve a little bit with each and every effort.

We want to make an effort to take more photographs, and post them on the blog. Even if we're not surrounded by exciting material to photograph, we're hoping that creativity can overcome the lack of opportunities.

I must say though, that everytime I see a photograph of myself these days I just end up filing it. I'm not a very vain person . . . but I barely recognize myself in a photo these days.

Yesterday we drove up to the top of Chiques Rock at sunrise and took a few photographs (one of which is above). It was a very brisk morning, with frost on the ground. The sun behind us lit up the hillside on the other side of the river, and morning mist floated low to the ground.

We'll see what we can come up with for tomorrow!