Leaves

The other day Max and I were walking Kodiak and we got to talking about how much fun it was to jump into big piles of leaves, lamenting the fact that we did not have our big tree any more. Passing under a shedding maple tree, inspiration apparently struck as Max suddenly cried, “Stuff your pockets!” and I felt little kid fingers tickling my butt as he jammed leaves into my back pocket. He came back to the house with his arms full of leaves and twigs and dumped them onto our front yard. I took out the rakes and we scrounged more leaves from our neighbor’s yard to get some more material for our project. It wasn’t exactly like the old days, but it was better than nothing. So of course it rained overnight and now I have a sodden pile of leaves that don’t even belong to me.

When I was a kid, we had a big back yard, nearly an acre, big enough for a pint size baseball or football field, so that's what we used it for. My friends and I dug a big hole at the very back of the yard for a fort and laid plywood over it for a roof. We furnished it with leaves, of course. Nice dry crunchy comfy leaves. Until the weather changed and the monsoons struck. Then it turned into a smushy slimy mess.

Is there a life lesson here? Perhaps it is simply that some good ideas work great until it rains and the crunch goes right out of them.