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The smell of the burning leaves is My Dad and I raked them in the afternoon but he always waited until Moving to South Carolina in 1991, I was happy to find no such prohibition on leaf burning. Unfortunately, by this time, Denise was no longer living with us and both Brandy and Carrie were too "grown up" and "too busy" to participate anymore. Even so, I would still burn an occasional small pile of leaves just for nostalgic reasons. Now that we're back in northern Virginia again, leaf burning is still prohibited and I feel a bit sad that my grandchildren will miss the experience. Environmental protection is the stated reason for the ban but, while factories still throw millions of tons of pollutants into the air each year, you can get a citation for burning a little pile of leaves. Go figure! That said, I still occasionally put a small pile of leaves together on an Autumn Saturday and burn them for the grandkids. I figure I'll stop doing that when the government stops all those major industrial polluters. |
As I mentioned on the previous page, I love the
beautiful color variations that come with the changing of the foliage in
the fall. When I was growing up in Chicago, it was in full
swing by early September and leaves actually began falling in late
August. Here in Virginia, however, the foliage normally doesn't
start in earnest until very late September or even early October and you can still find leaves on the trees as
late as mid November some years. To me, the colors
here in Virginia just seem more vivid than I remember them back in
Chicago.
another of
those pleasant childhood fall memories indelibly etched in my memory.
As a kid, I remember that smell wafting through the entire neighborhood on
weekend afternoons and evenings as everyone raked and burned their leaves.
I also talked a bit about our leaf-raking ritual on the previous page.
dusk or just after to burn them as he knew I enjoyed it that much more
after dark. I loved that acrid-sweet smell. However, I was not
quite as thrilled when the wind would blow the concentrated smoke in my
face, making me cough and my eyes burn for a couple moments.
Sometimes it seemed, no matter where you stood, the wind would change in
order to blow the smoke in your face. I also remember that my front
was always toasty warm while my back got chilled from the cool night air.
When we moved to southern Mississippi in 1980 we had over 50 trees on
our property and most were hardwoods. This meant there was never a shortage
of leaves to rake in the fall. While I raked them myself, our
daughters were all still young enough to get the same kick out of burning
leaves that I'd gotten so many years earlier and we often conducted the
leaf burning ritual together. When we moved to the island of Oahu in Hawaii, there were no
trees in our yard. Also, with the warmer climate, the leaves didn't
fall as predominantly as they do in the more temperate regions of the
mainland and I don't remember seeing any color change in them. After moving from Hawaii to northern Virginia, I
discovered to my major disappointment that, while there were plenty of
trees on our property, there was a prohibition against burning leaves.
