The white oak in my front side yard. The trees beyond it are in my neighbor’s yard.

One of the trees in my front yard is the first one to turn in the fall. It is also the first one to drop its leaves. It drops them into that narrow piece of our property that’s to the side of the driveway.

My neighbor has yard guys to who come periodically and mow and trim and edge and, most importantly, rake. As you can see, her tree in her front yard is still summery green. Maybe three or four leaves have turned and drifted down into her yard. But for the most part, any leaves in her yard are, yes, indeed, leaves from our tree. A few years ago, her yard guys came and cleaned and mowed, etc., one beautiful fall day. We admired her lovely yard, from our dried-leaf-laden yard. That night a stiff south/south-east wind blew through. In the morning, our yard was all clean, and her yard was full of our leaves. For a reason I don’t recall, our boys were both here, and I quickly sent them over there with rakes and the admonition to “rake those leaves back over here. FAST!”

Here’s my golden-leafed tree, beyond which is my neighbor’s green-as-summer tree. Therefore, any leaves in her yard used to be attached to my tree, having been scattered over there by the south/south-easterly breeze.

I’ve tried to stay on top of the problem. Last year, I drove into the driveway one Saturday morning after doing some shopping. The yard guys had been next door, and there was a clear line where her clean yard stopped and our leafy yard began. I brought David outside and said, “Are you going to mow those leaves to mulch them?” He said he was. I said, “Do it right now, before all our leaves blow over to her house. And make sure that they’re shooting out of the mower this way instead of that.” He worked valiantly to keep from rolling his eyes as he went to get the mower.

This year, I’ve really tried to stay on top of it. I’ve raked almost every day, which is good exercise for me, and I’m getting lots of good leaves for the compost, which I’m also trying to keep abreast of. One issue is that the most common wind direction is SSE, which blows directly from our yard across hers. One night, two or three nights ago, there was a very strong north wind. Yay!! Lots of leaves blew from the side, across the driveway, and right onto the other part of our yard. And the tree in the center of that part has only just begun to drop leaves, and they have further to go before invading the neighbors’ yard on the other side. Win-win! But, alas, winter’s not quite here, yet, and the breeze is back to SSE.

The end of the sidewalk shows the edge of my neighbor’s lot line. You can easily and clearly see where the yard guys have stopped with their leaf-gathering. By time I finished raking, my side looked that good, too.

Her yard people showed up on Tuesday. There were three BIG bags of raked leaves in her yard when I went outside. It wasn’t too bad on our side, but I did rake. Even though the SSE breeze was pretty stiff, I worked hard and got most of it up.

I may have given the impression that my neighbor is angry and difficult about the leaves in her yard. Nothing could be further from the truth. She is a good and kind neighbor, and we are lucky to have her living next door to us. I’m just trying to be a good neighbor myself and take responsibility for how my yard affects hers.

Thursday morning, I went out to rake, because, of course, more leaves fell and 90% of them were next door. In the driveway of the house on the other side of my neighbor, a couple of boys were tossing a basketball. They had come to visit their grandmother, who moved into that house a year or two after my family moved into the house where David and I now live. That family’s kids were preschoolers when I was a school-ager and teen-ager. A few minutes into my raking, they came over and asked if they could help. “Yes, you can,” I said. I asked who their parents were, to figure out their place in the family I used to know. “Oh,” I said,” your mother was born when I was a teen-ager. I remember the older kids better.” And, sort of to prove that I really did know who they were, I named their mother’s three older siblings. “Uncle Stephen!” they said. And they went off to get him, and his daughters came, too. So, four kids raking, and the yard got cleaned up quickly, while I chatted with Stephen. A great Thanksgiving Day.