Monday, November 01, 2004
This is my version of Linda White's "Too Many Pumpkins," one of my favorite Fall/Halloween books.
Every year at falltime, Shana Henrichsen and her three little darlings venture outside in the cool, crisp air to rake leaves. When Shana was a child she lived in Colorado, which was beautiful but didn't have very many trees that dropped their leaves with the changing seasons. Most of the trees in Colorado were pine trees which as you know, never change color but rather, stay green and prickly year round. As she got older Shana went to college in Utah, which is worse than Colorado because of course, it is a desert and deserts just don't have very many trees. Then Shana met Mr. Henrichsen, with whom she quickly fell in love with. They were married and eventually settled themselves in Connecticut. Now, Connecticut is drastically different than Colorado and Utah. There are so many trees in Connecticut that sometimes you can hardly see the blue sky and golden sun above you. Everywhere you go there are trees--oak trees, maple trees, pine trees. Spring trees, summer trees, fall trees, winter trees. Dead trees, baby trees, apple trees, peach trees, and pear trees. Oodles and bundles of trees!
Now every year when the children return to school in their clean and pressed clothes and their shiney new shoes and the weather starts turning colder, the leaves on the trees begin to change color. Trees that were once green turn firey red and yellow and orange. It really is a beautiful sight and when Mrs. Henrichsen and her three darling boys go for walks they can't help but stop and pick up the colorful leaves to take home and press. Fall is an exciting time in Connecticut with pumpkin picking and homemade cider and especially the changing colors. People from all over the country come to see the leaves and everywhere you go, folks are stopping on the side of the road to snap a few pictures for their scrapbooks. The Henrichsen Family is no exception--they love everything about Fall.
That is. . . everything except the fallen leaves. Fallen leaves are no good. No sir! Sure you can jump in a pile of them and when they are pressed, they make some really pretty greeting cards. But that's about it. You can't sell leaves--especially in Connecticut--everyone has enough of their own. Even with all the Pick-Your-Own farms around here--nobody wants to come and pick their own leaves. And when it comes to baking--I've never heard of a recipe that calls for dead, crunchy orange leaves. Have you? Anyhow, who would want to eat leaf pie, leaf bread, leaf muffins, leaf cake, leaf pudding, leaf jam, leaf tarts or leaf cookies. No matter how much sugar or spice you add to them, they'd never taste good. You can't carve leaves and stick candles inside them--they'd just start on fire. You can't dig in them like sand and you can't swim in them. You can't build a snowman with them or a snow igloo, and you most certainly can't go sledding on them. Nope! The only thing you can do with leaves is bag them up and wait for the trash truck to come and take them away.
So every year when the leaves fall, Mrs. Henrichsen and her three darling sons venture out into the cold, crisp air to rake and rake and rake the leaves. And when they're done, they're through, because what else do you do with too many leaves?
  
P.S. The view from the pile of leaves in our backyard.
posted by Shana # 11:01 PM 
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