Raking Leaves

TO MOST PEOPLE its a nuisance,an anoyance,even a migraine. To mie, its a rite of autumn, an damnedgood exercie for an older "gentleman". I refer to raking leaves on a one third acre suburban lot in a small town with about twenty mature maple and oak trees,which recently barely survived a massive drought, and let many of their leaves loose,to avoid dying, I suppose. Traumatized trees, trees in shock. The twenty or so deciduous treest I planted twenty years ago are fully grown, I hope,and my yard and my life are knee deep in maple leaves, much much too early in late summer, victims of he drought which have been somewhat alleviated, but probably not totally ended. For me, a positive thinker, that's a tip toe through the tulips. Their fate is a leaf by leaf affair, depending on my mood and the vicissitudes of circumstance and fortune. Some I rake and bundle up, for the garbage man's amusement. Others will remain dormant until I break out the lawn mover in early march.I don't want to pay anyone to do my yard work until I get too old and feeble to do it, which I hope won't happen until the day I die. So, I rake and bundle, filling trash cans and big plastic bags like a Republican filling the air with hot mess and lies...A few thousand years ago there was an estimated seven trillion trees on Earth, science says. Homo sapiens hs cut that number in half, and keeps going, madly, franticlly chopping and denuding. We aren't finished. Ten billion trees a year are human harvested. The good news is that some countries are belatedly but steadily beginning to perceive the problem, and make changes. Belts of new trees hundreds of miles long nd wide are being planted in China and all across North Africa.The day may come when sub Saharan Africa is a vast, verdant, lush forest, with climat change, and reverse climate change through human intrvention. When I planted trees all over the then barren yard surrouding my newly built house twenty years ago, my mother, understandably, predicted that I would live to rue the day. I can still see her point, but au contrar, dear mother, no regrets here. I am waging a small scale war against global environmental destruction. I would applaud anyone else for doing this; I'll let other people applaud me, if they can make the connection between my yard and the rest of the planet. Earlier today I told my neighbor that he and I will both live to see a summer in which the temperature rises to one hundred degrees by Memmorial Day, and largely remains there until Labor Day. His silence told me that eithr he thought I was talking crazy, or that he didn't care. I told him that it doesn't matter to me personally, that I will be dead soon, but that it sure as hell will matter to his children and now young grand children. Still no response. Americans don't care about global warming/climate change because they have air conditioning, and, well, it really isn't doing them any harm, so, so what, what's the big deal? Oh, but it is doing them harm. Food prices are already headed for the roof, as are cooling bills. Heat already kills more people in the United States and Europe, the places we care most about, than most other causes of death. And still we elect morons like Trump and other Republicans who will be dead in a few months and who lack the intellect and courage and integrity to accept reality. I'm seventy one, and can still run a fifteen minute mile. I should be able to rake leaves at least a few more years. My trees won't get much bigger, if any. I have the money to pay for yard work help, if it comes to that. So, it seems I'm set. Then too, as I mentioned, I'll be dead before humanity has to deal with and somehow survive climate change for real, or do someting to reverse it, which I, in my never ending optomism, think will happen. But, who knows? Either wewilor wewon't. i hope to live long enough to find out, but can't count on it.