My Leaf Raking Adventure With Andre.

This morning, I came back from the chiropractor, feeling pretty good as usual. So I decided to do a couple physical chores.

The first was cleaning and lubing up my bike. Which meant turning it upside down, which is something that a couple of weeks ago, I would not have dared to try, since my back was that fucked up.

Next, I got really ambitious and decided to tackle the most dreaded job in the yard…raking the leaves out of the 2 foot deep ditch that runs the whole width of my property, maybe 120 feet.

This is dreaded because there is no real way to do this that can’t be classified as back-breaking labour.

Now the ditch runs down the street and around the bend of my next door neighbour’s house, and I noticed him way down on the far side of his yard, doing the same thing. His ditch is much shallower than mine and every time I walk or ride by his house, I find myself involuntarily saying to myself…man, I wish I has a ditch like that.

But I digress. The first and most important part of the ditch job is removing the leaves from the tube that goes underneath my driveway, cause you really have to dig around in there.

Fortunately I was smart enough to buy a very small, and extendable rake at Giant Tiger, which is a kind of small department store in this area, where they have a surprising number of hardware type things that I find useful, and it’s a good place for some grocery stuff too.

So I’m pulling yucky wet leaves out of the tube and bagging them and then I take a look down the ditch to see my neighbour, or at least I think it’s my neighbour, and he’s moving right along with his ditch raking. And I’m thinking, yeah, no back issues there.

I’m moving a bit slowly and carefully because the last thing I want to do is mess up my back. And I’m making progress, but I keep looking at the vast expanse of ditch left to go and I’m starting to find it a bit depressing.

But I am determined to carry on, because this is the one job I really want to be done with.

The next thing I know is that I am close enough to my neighbour to now realize that he is, in fact, not my neighbour, but he has actually cleared about 2/3 of my ditch, and is still going strong.

His name is Andre and he told me that he knows the wife of my next door neighbour and that she had broken her arm a few days ago so he was helping her out. I know from observation that she was very much in charge of the yard work, so she would have needed the help for sure.

Andre and I shot the breeze for a while. He told me that he was semi-retired from the farming business, and that he liked to help people rake their leaves and push their snow around, because it’s a good thing to do and it keeps him active.

Andre and I finished the ditch together. I thanked him profusely and offered him some leaf bags if he needed them, which he politely declined and went on his way.

Since I have moved here three years ago, next month, I have started to realize that this is very much a community of good people. People who are more than willing to help other people in whatever way they can.

Now I imagine that there are literally thousands of communities like mine scattered all over the place. These are places where people just carry on, and really get that helping others means that others will be there when they need help.

It’s a far cry and light years from the turbulence we see on the news every night. It’s a whole other world that where people care about their neighbours, and just want everything to stay peaceful and calm.

It’s taken me probably longer than it should have to get off my big city horse and start to really appreciate the basic quality of life we have here and the quality of people we share this city with.

But better late than never I suppose. Maybe when my back is completely mended, I’ll help some people get rid of their leaves and push their snow around too.

jim out

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