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Oct. 15th, 2003 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillYesterday it blew and rained; leaves flew diagonally past the windows, sometimes as thick as confetti. So I raked leaves today. I grew up in Oregon, where the leaves turn yellow, and then they turn brown, and they rot off the trees into slicks that stain the street and make the sidewalk slippery; the romance of fall is still new to me. Leaves that are crisp and colored and curly are cool.
We have a rake, because there was one left over in the carport. Its handle has gone age-grey, smoothed by the friction of countless palms, and its tines are bent and rusty in places, though I can still see where they used to be green. The very flimsiness--the bendyness, if you will-of the tines lets them rake around things in a way a broom just can't manage. And you can sweep bushels of leaves in one glad fling.
Scraps of color rain away from the mass as the breeze catches them; you can pile them knee high. The maple and sycamore seeds stay behind, not caught but aligned by the passing tines, so that they lie like a combed pelt, brown against the grey concrete of the patio.
Rakes make a special noise, too: kind of a scraping chime when they touch concrete or asphalt. I like it much better than a leaf blower. It's just kind of a deliberate, minding-my-business noise, like splitting wood or sweeping the porch, with a rhythm set by the work itself and a pace that gets in my bones.
We have a rake, because there was one left over in the carport. Its handle has gone age-grey, smoothed by the friction of countless palms, and its tines are bent and rusty in places, though I can still see where they used to be green. The very flimsiness--the bendyness, if you will-of the tines lets them rake around things in a way a broom just can't manage. And you can sweep bushels of leaves in one glad fling.
Scraps of color rain away from the mass as the breeze catches them; you can pile them knee high. The maple and sycamore seeds stay behind, not caught but aligned by the passing tines, so that they lie like a combed pelt, brown against the grey concrete of the patio.
Rakes make a special noise, too: kind of a scraping chime when they touch concrete or asphalt. I like it much better than a leaf blower. It's just kind of a deliberate, minding-my-business noise, like splitting wood or sweeping the porch, with a rhythm set by the work itself and a pace that gets in my bones.
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Date: 2003-10-15 07:42 pm (UTC)The property of the tines of the rake is either "flexibility" or "elasticity". These are both attributes specifically of steel; I wonder what rakes were made of in 1800 or so.
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Date: 2003-10-16 06:02 am (UTC)Debbie
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Date: 2003-10-16 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-16 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-16 10:11 am (UTC)And I believe you can still get them.
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Date: 2003-10-16 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-17 07:13 am (UTC)And steel is hardest to break.