Leaves

 

As a child I lived in a small two-family house in Middle Village, Queens. There was a tree at the curb in front of the house, but no trees in the rear yard. The one tree did have a few leaves in the fall, but not many. If one wanted to observe the fall foliage’s colors, there was such splendor to see in Forest Park. That nearby park unlike the other city main parks, was fully entitled to the name “Forest Park, because it was in fact a forest. My wife and I I lived in a small so called garden apartment. Except for a small grass area in front of the apartment, there were no trees and no Fall foliage, in fact, no garden at all.

     After our son was born, we decided the time had come to look for a house. After much effort, we ended up buying a beautiful house in Kew Gardens Hills. The purchase was made in the month of June. At that time, there was a large tree on the front lawn and another tree at the curb. In the rear yard, there were many trees of different varieties. When Spring came, the trees in the front and rear exploded with many leaves. Comes the Fall the explosion delivered many different leaf colors.AT the end of Autumn leaves would begin to say so long” to its trees. One cannot count the number of fallen leaves, but I would estimate the number to be in the hundreds of thousands. Picking them up would fill dozens of bags and it was not an easy task. While I was still my own gardener for a long period of time, there came a time when I needed a surgery to replace my aorta valve. I engaged a gardener to take care of my lawns. After I recovered, since I liked the gardener, I kept him to take care of the lawns and shrubs, with care of the flowers left to me.

    When Autumn arrived, keeping the gardener was good because removal of the leaves became his task.  I could enjoy watching the leaves unfolding on tree branches, turning colors, starting to fall and not have to remove the leaves from the lawns. I have lived in New York City my entire life. I always enjoyed I living in a part of the world that has four different and beautiful enjoyable seasons.

Ben Haber