Leaf me alone!

My yard is covered with small, yellow leaves. A lot of small, yellow leaves!

Not too unusual given the time of year and all, until you consider that the trees in my yard have leaves that are big and green. And that most of them are still attached!

So where are the little yellow leaves coming from?

For such a small yard, I've always seemed to have an inordinate amount of leaves to rake, blow, shred, bag and otherwise transport to the curb every fall. People have advised me to "only rake once." But it's never been an option, because it seemed that the various trees in my yard dropped their leaves at different times.

Until this week, I never suspected that a huge portion of the leaves I'd been processing were coming from trees that weren't even mine.

You see in the past, it's been too cold for me to spend much time in the backyard this late in the season, so I've never paid much attention to where the leaves in my yard originated. But this year, it's been warm. And while was sitting outside one day, I noticed that the leaves on my lawn in no way, shape or form, resembled the leaves on my trees!

From my vantage point on the patio, it didn't take long to see that the ONLY trees in the area with small, yellow leaves, were in my neighbor's yard. D'oh! The trees are positioned (suspiciously) so that every time the wind blows south, the leaves that come loose blow directly into my yard.

I'm really starting to hate trees. All trees really, but the neighbor's trees most of all. Which begs the question:

If two trees fell in the neighbor's yard, and no one was home to hear them, would I get arrested?