Recently my wife and I put up a greenhouse in our backyard. It’s pretty cool, or should I say, at least on sunny days now in February, warm. It’s eight feet by twelve and set on an angle relative to the yard, but aligned on a west to east axis. The slightly cockeyed placement adds a touch of insouciant irregularity to our standard, symmetrical, rectangular yard.
Finishing the floor last week, tromping around outside the greenhouse lugging heavy bags of stone, especially after 4 inches of snow fell, then melted on our heavy clay backyard, we quickly turned the area around the greenhouse into a field of mud. Our boots sank into the ooze, every step soupy and sloshy.
We spread some old cardboard and a few boards as bridges over the worst, but it wasn’t enough. What more could I use to fill in the wintry swamp? Leaves! We had raked and saved all our leaves in the fall, most chopped up for compost, but still one bin still whole. So I fetched a few bushels and spread them over the increasingly muddy swamp around the greenhouse. While doing it, I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m unraking my yard!” Unrake my yard? Unrake my yard! It reminded me of the Joe Cocker song, “Unchain my Heart.” So I wrote my own version.
Unrake My Yard
Unrake my yard, baby spread those lea-eaves,
Mud ’round my shoes, oozes like through a sieve,
Unrake my yard, baby spread all those lea-eaves,
Unrake my yard, cause I need somewhere to walk.
Every time I rake up my leaves,
The north wind done come, and blows them all around
Unrake my yard, please put ’em back
Unrake my yard, baby spread all those leaves.