I'd rather be sewing

... or what I did on my Monday ...

We have a long driveway.  300 feet, to be exact.  It's about 11 feet wide, more or less.  One one side, there are oleanders and cypress (?) trees that we share with our neighbor who has a similar driveway. 

The cypress (or whatever they are) trees shed.  So do the oleanders.  The leaves fall on the driveway and over time, start to seriously encroach on the width of the driveway.  Such has been happening over time and about 4 feet of the driveway (on one side) has become covered with dead leaves.  Today was the day that I finally pulled up my big girl panties, got my rakes and flat-bladed shovel and attacked the debris.

It's not particularly *difficult* work but it is strenuous and tiring and hot.  By the time I started this morning at 10am, half of the driveway was in the sun and half was in the shade.  I elected to start clearing the leaves from the driveway that was *in the shade*.  My mama didn't raise no dummy!

So, I raked a section about 4 feet long and the width of the debris field (mmm .. 4 feet, more or less).  This was then shoveled into a wagon that has a bed that tips up.  When the wagon was filled with leafy debris, I put a big yard trash bag at the end and up-ended the wagon bed into the trash bag.  Over and over and over. 

Then I realized that .. hmmm .. I don't need to be shoveling the *dirt* into the trash bags .. the *dirt* can be distributed elsewhere in the yard.  So, my raked piles were first separated into leafy debris for the trash bag and dirt for the yard.  Over and over and over.

Over the course of the afternoon, I took two breaks and was forced to call it a day around 4pm when we needed to go retrieve one of our cars that was being repaired.  In all, I cleared about 120 feet by 4 feet of leafy debris and dirt.

Remember that I said our driveway was 300 feet long?  Ummm, yeah.  In the picture here, the red area is what I cleared and bagged.  The green area (which is considerably narrower than the previous 4 feet of debris!) is about 48 feet long.  That won't take too long to clear.  But the blue area in the back?  Don't let the perspective fool you .... that tiny, tiny blue area is really .... 135 feet long by 4 feet wide!  Oy vey.

The reason I didn't start on that section is because *that* was the area that was in the sun when I started!  It'll be in the sun tomorrow morning too .. so I'm going to wait until tomorrow AFTERNOON when the shade hits it before I start on that area.

Eventually, I'll need to clear the other side of the driveway .. about 170 feet worth ... of debris also, but it's not nearly as wide an area.  I'm anticipating that it'll take the major part of whatever day I work on it.

This is all time that I'd really rather be sewing because when I'm sewing, I'm in an air conditioned room and I get to SIT DOWN.  :-)