Leaves are a lot more fun in the forest, where I can marvel over their pretty colors, photograph them, and move on.

Our lawn and back hill were covered in a blanket of oak leaves on Sunday. I’d planned to spend the day putting the garden to bed for the winter — cutting back perennials, turning the compost, and pulling weeds. I wound up spending nearly six hours sweeping leaves off the deck, raking, and mowing over piles of oak crisps to chop them into a mulch.

Sunday dawned warm. Mid-morning, I was in short sleeves under a blue sky, listening to the rustle of wind. I started the morning with my shears, cutting back the Shasta daisies and goldenrod. I filled the wheelbarrow, and after one attempt to push it up the hill to dump the dead stems, slipping and sliding on the leaves on the steep hill, I had to stop cutting back the perennials and switch to raking leaves. I needed to clear a path from the bottom of the hill to the top so I’d have enough traction to get the wheelbarrow up to the compost pile. I dragged maybe 8-10 tarps full of leaves to the top of the hill. The leaves were crispy and light, like coppery paper cutouts. I mowed them over to make them small, and their dust blew into my face as I chopped them up.

After a few hours and a break for lunch, I’d cleared enough of a path that I could finally continue my original work of cutting back the daisies, the goldenrod, and the milkweed I grew from seed. I didn’t deadhead the milkweed this year, and their section of the garden looked like a cotton patch. Their seed pods had burst open, and the fine tendrils of floss that helps the hundreds of seeds drift on the wind had all clumped together in a silky white poof, stuck in the stems of the dried out plants. I cut the stems back and freed the silky seeds. Maybe they’ll make their way somewhere they can take root and grow and feed some monarch caterpillars.

At the end of my gardening day, the lawn was covered again in a blanket of oak sheddings. The tree’s crown is still half full of coppery foliage. With each breath of wind, scores of papery leaves drift gracefully down and then tick to the ground.