‘Tis the season! The weather is warming, Spring is here, and despite Thursday’s SNOW, warmer weather is here. Warmer weather brings lots of things, my least favorite being Spring Cleanup. Spring cleanup is generally one good sweep of the yard, collecting any leaves and sticks you either missed at the end of fall or that have accumulated over the winter. In my case, it’s collecting all the debris I hid under the bushes and jammed into corners last fall.

Motivated Spring Matt has some serious beef with Lazy Fall Matt.

Our property has about 10 feet of “woods” in the back yard, city property that acts as a buffer between our plan and the plan behind us. It’s made up of at least 25 deciduous trees. That makes for a TON of leaves. To make matters worse, there are about a dozen oak trees around my yard. They were great two falls ago when not one acorn dropped, however last fall nature got even dropping more acorns than I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Don’t get me wrong, I did a ton of work last fall. Well over 100 bags of leaves got stuffed and hauled up to the curb for pickup. Then I got busy. I was losing my job and had to travel back and forth quite a bit to New York. Plus it got cold quick, and it’s no fun bagging leaves in the cold cutting wind. I made the decision that I would use the leaf blower to jam as many leaves and acorns under the bushes until I had a chance to bag them. It wasn’t totally born out of laziness, I just figured that jammed under the bushes, they were less likely to blow all over my yard again.

I also left the “woods” alone. I spent my first summer in this house clearing the thorns and brush because I knew the boys would gravitate to the trees. I knew that come Spring, these leaves would be pretty easy to clean up.

My final spot is the stick pile. Our town requires us to bundle sticks in 4 foot lengths to be left at curbside. It’s a royal pain in the ass. I have a pile in a part of the yard that we don’t use and generally don’t see. It’s grown quite big. I took out a lot of small trees and bushes last summer and fall and added them all to the pile.

So long story short, it’s time to pay the piper. As new growth presses upwards towards the Spring sky, I need to get ahead of the game. I have big plans for the landscaping, but I have to clear out the junk. Last week with Audrey away, I cleared the woods, 55 bags of acorns, sticks and leaves. I also loaded up my truck with about half of the stick pile and hauled it off to the recycling center.

This weekend it’s time to finish the stick pile and tackle what lurks beneath the bushes. I’m guessing I won’t fill another 55 bags, but I can see millions of acorns on the side of the house. Acorns make for heavy bags and sore muscles.

It will be worth it in the long run as I clean up the yard and give the boys some added space to run and explore, but I’m making a note to myself, “This fall, no shortcuts, Motivated Spring Matt has better things to do than clean up leaves and acorns”