Raking With Imagination

On Monday, Youngest Daughter had the day off school.   Despite my not being paid since August (which had nothing to do with the government shutdown), I had work to do.  And all those leaves were waiting on the lawn.  Mid-afternoon YD indicated that she had run out of her own fun, so I told her to go rake leaves for 20 minutes. 

After a long while she came back in.  I went out and saw in the front yard, which faces north, these leaf piles, scattered rather like chicken pox.  

The North

Apparently it was my job to put the leaves in the yard waste bin.  I worked on it for a little while, and then came in and got distracted by an important phone call.  I forgot all about the leaf piles, but YD didn’t.

A while later, YD bounced back inside and announced, “The South is the New North!”  Sure enough, there were new leaf piles in the southern part of our yard.  It turns out that her leaf piles were all cities, and elaborate political machinations had occurred between the piles, with treaties, alliances, wars, and invasions.  She explained it all to me at length.  Great length.  Eventually peace was achieved between the leaf cities.

The South

Knowing that rain was coming on Wednesday, alas, on Tuesday I had to destroy all those cities and create a megalopolis at the top of the street.  Soon the leaves will all be sucked up in the leaf truck.  I hope YD’s imagination will not be, because there are plenty more leaves to be civilized.

Metropolis of leaves

The Wild, Uncivilized East Lawn