Blowing Leaves

Emma Verrue lives with her dad, Dave, across the street from my wife Janie and I. They have quite a few large aspen trees across the front of their yard.
 
On an October Sunday afternoon, I was in my front yard and saw Emma raking aspen leaves in her driveway. I jokingly said that she could rake my yard if she wanted to. She promptly came over and started raking the leaves in my front yard. I asked her if she wanted to learn how to use my backpack blower to blow the remaining leaves off the aspens in my yard. Her face lit up as she said, ‘Yeah!’
 
I instructed her on proper blower safety and operating techniques, adjusted the straps to fit her, and added fuel to the tank. We started it up together, and I helped put it on her back. She blew what leaves would come off the trees and obliterated the pile she had made in my yard. She laughed quietly as she learned the finer points of moving leaves around with air. Several times, I picked up a pile of leaves in my hand, extended my arm and she would blow them way up in the air and and giggle as they would float down like snowflakes. After the pile in my yard was decimated, she started to get tired, having that heavy blower on her back. She shut it off and I helped take it off.
 She said she had started a pile in her yard with her friends, and wanted to make it larger, so when they came over they could all play in it. I took the blower and blew the leaves out from under the aspens to her yard. With her raking and me blowing the leaves, we made two sizable piles, one on each side of her driveway. Of course, she had to take another turn blowing the leaves around in her yard! She got very excited again when I asked her if she wanted to use my wheelbarrow with me to transport one of the piles of leaves to the other to make one big one.
 
She was very happy and laughed at the thrill of riding in the wheelbarrow from my house over to her yard. We piled and piled leaves into the wheelbarrow. She rode on top of the leaves as we transported them from one side of the driveway to the other. When it was time to unload the leaves onto the pile, I would tilt the wheelbarrow to the side. She would lean over and land into the pile on the ground and I would cover her up with the leaves left in the wheelbarrow.
 
And so it was that a few hours on a Sunday afternoon brought some joy (and education!) to a little girl, and to a grandfather that misses his grandchildren.