Autumn turns neighbours into leaf warriors
· Citizen
Autumn should be magical. The air turns crisp, the trees glow gold and orange and social media fills with pictures of people holding coffee mugs while wearing thick scarves they absolutely do not need yet in this weather. In theory, it is presumably a peaceful season.
In reality, autumn in my neighbourhood is a low-level military conflict fought entirely with leaves. The trouble starts the moment the first leaf falls.
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That single leaf is never alone. It’s the advance scout for an invasion force of roughly 14 billion others that cover driveways, clogging gutters and emotionally destroying anyone who owns a broom.
I have no problem with leaves in principle. On trees, they are beautiful. Floating gently through the air, they look poetic and cinematic. But once they land in your yard, they become tiny biodegradable terrorists.
And my neighbours react to autumn in different ways.
There’s the competitive sweeper – the man who attacks his driveway at sunrise every morning. You can hear him scraping leaves off concrete with the determination of someone removing evidence from a crime scene.
Then we have a lazy leaf philosopher. This neighbour stands outside holding coffee and announces: “Leaves are nature’s blanket.”
But the true villain of autumn is the leaf blower guy. Every suburb has one. This man owns a machine loud enough to clear wildlife from three provinces yet, somehow, incapable of actually removing leaves permanently. He simply redistributes them. Usually into my yard.
At this point, my neighbours and I are essentially playing an environmentally friendly version of leaf tennis.
I sweep the leaves into neat piles. Then the wind returns them to their original positions.
Neighbour number three blows them sideways. Then everybody pretends the giant pile in the middle of the street belongs to nobody.
I believe autumn changes people psychologically. Normal adults become territorial about leaves:
“Those are your leaves.”
“No, they blew from your tree.”
“Well, your tree started it.”
Diplomatic relations collapse entirely once somebody burns garden refuse and the smoke drifts over a braai.
Still, despite the conflict, there is something strangely comforting about autumn, because beneath the passive-aggressive sweeping, the suspicious glances over garden walls – and the constant soundtrack of leaf blowers – we are all united by the same truth: we are merely rake-holders that lose battles against trees.