Leaf-raking party 2012

This has been such a beautiful fall season in Fort Wayne! But now most of the leaves are off the trees and on the ground, and citywide leaf-pick-up is less than a week away. So some of us girls got together today to do some community raking.

We started by answering a call for help from an eldery lady who lives a few blocks away. Her name was also Connie, and she was so sweet, one of the girls asked if she could call her "Gramma." While some of the girls were trying to carefully rake along the border between hers and her neighbor's house, Rahmo said, "Why don't we just rake their yard too?" After a few moments of awkward uncertainty from us territorial Americans, she said, "I am African, ya'll - this is what I do!" So she promptly raked the unknown neighbor's yard clean, while dancing to Beiber songs on her phone.

Then we decided to just march from door to door down our street asking if we could clean up leaves for people. In the process, we got to meet some of our neighbors and visit a little bit. First was the Korean musician named Peter who had two guitars and a tic-tac-toe board sketched on his shirt, who thought we were "pretty cool."

We left one of our rakes at Gramma Connie's, so Hannah ran back over to get it. She was gone for so long, I called her to find out where she was, suspicious that she was skipping out on the work. "Back off!" she retorted. "She was dragging large bags of dirt out to her garden by herself, so I helped her so she wouldn't hurt herself!" Well, alright then.

Next came the huge yellow house with the garden decorations and tenants who own the antique furniture store on the corner. James was on his way out and seemed slightly suspicious of us when we asked if we could rake leaves for him. "For how much?" he asked. "Oh, nothing at all! We just are here to serve." He gave us a strange smile and said ok, and thanks a lot. Clearing the pile of leaves from his garden was a challenge, but the girls were successful. Don't they look they awesome?!

Next they took care of my house, and finished off with one more, completing six yards in total, before coming back to my kitchen to make brownies and listen to music. I love this picture, the girls relaxing and giggling together... :)

So proud of my girls! It was so awesome to see them working so hard and with such a great attitude. For all your leaf-raking needs, you know now where to go! ;)