Rake

N othing motivates me to rake leaves quite like having a neighbor who has already done it. The juxtaposition of his bright-green lawn with my leaf-carpeted one highlights the fact that my turf needs to breathe; this sodden leaf layer must be suffocating poor Blade O'Grass and the rest of his family. So I assembled the tools - garden gloves, rake and trash bags - and attacked the yard with gusto last week. Initially, it was almost a meditative activity; the gentle scrape-scrape of the rake matched my breathing.

What a wonderful teaching moment for the 35,000 students at the University of Maryland ("UM to leave ACC for Big Ten in '14," Nov. 20). Integrity? Nope. Honor? Forget it. Tradition? Irrelevant. There is only money. There is nothing else. Cheer for 2014: Go Terps, Yeah Terps, Rake it In, Rake it In. What a shame. Dave Mayhew, Cockeysville

Raking and disposing of leaves is the one simple garden chore most likely to start an argument in our house. Can't I just mow the leaves without bothering to pick them up? My wife thinks the leaves look terrible on the lawn and will kill the grass.This is a classic yardwork marriage-buster. The answer depends on the number of leaves that fall on your lawn. If after mowing the grass you can still see most of your grass, then it would be OK to leave them. If the leaves completely cover the grass blades after they're mowed, however, your turf could be damaged.

The first sign that this isn't an ordinary warehouse in southwest Baltimore is the bright blue murals of screwdrivers, wrenches and other tools painted on the exterior. Inside, the real thing: shovels, rakes, hammers, paint trays, pliers, hard hats, ladders, wheelbarrows, electric drills and just about every tool imaginable for rehabbing a house or sprucing up a park. It's like a mini Home Depot. This is the home of the new Baltimore Community ToolBank, a nonprofit that opens today and the third of its kind in the country.

I collect leaves the old fashioned way, with a rake, a barrel and a kid. The rake assembles the leaves, the barrel holds them. Then the kid jumps in and squashes them.Long ago I was a leaf squasher, but last week I worked on the other side of the barrel as a gatherer. My 6-year-old started off raking. However, once the position of squasher opened up, he tossed aside the rake and the snow shovel, which he had used to scoop up the leaves, and climbed feet-first into the barrel.As dads do, I began to give the kid instructions.

WHEN THE leaves fall, I rake them. This, I recently discovered, is outmoded behavior. Raking is out; leaf manipulation is in. The classic autumnal scene of a guy in a sweater, quietly building piles of oak and maple leaves on his lawn, is passe, so "yesterday." In its place is the Technicolor image of a guy wearing thick protective ear gear, operating powerful, loud, leaf-manipulating equipment. These machines blow leaves, vacuum leaves and pulverize leaves, turning them, and sometimes their branches, into compact mulch.

It was organized chaos.Grown men huffing and puffing as they pushed wheelbarrows full of mulch up a trail at Centennial Park. Small boys flailing rakes and shovels at anything in their path.One child stood apart, arms akimbo, looking disgusted."Why don't you just borrow the other fellow's rake?" an adult asked him."Watch your head!" the adult shouted. A dozen rake handles were pushed in the child's direction."My arms are tired," said one of the young rakers. "I've never seen so much mulch."

Dear Machine Man, I'm the woman who lives across the wide creek in Annapolis. You already know who you are. You are the man of all things loud - the Almighty Macho Machine Man. You have never met a two-cycle engine you didn't like. "The more noise, the better" is your motto. You begin your onslaught with a little leaf-blowing at the mind-boggling hour of 7:30 a.m. Not your regular, steady ear-splitting whine, mind you. No. Instead of a constant "WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAA- AAAAAAAA," you choose the much more annoying form of a pulsing on and off: "WWWAAA" ... blessed second of silence ... "WWWAAA" ... and on and on, ad infinitum.

It really is autumn now, and the leaves are falling from the trees. And falling . . . and falling . . . and falling.You could just let the leaves lie -- especially if your garden is a meadow, or a vegetable garden fallow in winter, or a woodland. The leaves will rot, renewing the soil in the natural cycle.If you have your average American yard, though, mostly lawn, the leaves will settle into an impenetrable papier-mache ground cover, suffocating the grass below.If you love your lawn, and it is covered with more than just a scattering of small leaves, the leaves will have to go.You have two choices: a leaf blower or a rake.

So, your body never quite got ready for bathing suit season. Be glad for second chances: Fall yardwork has arrived. Lurking in every overstuffed gutter, stranglehold of weeds, mountain of leaves and unwinterized swimming pool may be the keys to a buffer bod. Richard Johnson of Center Moriches, N.Y., knows something about this kind of seasonal shape-up. "I have a new home, so I've been working since spring, trying to get this place presentable on the outside," he said. But Johnson, 54, is not your average hose-heaving homeowner.

ADVERTORIAL CONTENT Labor Day is here marking the “official” end of summer. White pants are out and flannel shirts are around the corner. And so are all the leaves that will be falling, falling, falling. Beautiful to look at but tiresome to rake (or blow). You know what follows - snow, snow, snow! If you are tired of endless yard work and back breaking snow shoveling then you need to visit a Traditions of America 55+ lifestyle community. The company currently has 5 active adult communities across Pennsylvania and at each one they take care of all of the yard work and snow shoveling!

Orioles third baseman Mark Reynolds is still batting below the Mendoza line and he still leads the team in strikeouts, but with a few big swings in the past week, he has shown why the Orioles were willing to trade for his big bat and worry about the other stuff later. Simply put, Reynolds is raking right now. With three home runs in his past five games -- including his first career grand slam in Saturday's win over the Mariners -- Reynolds has overtaken Adam Jones for the team lead in home runs (10)

Maryland's two casinos took in nearly $13.6 million in slots revenue in April, the Maryland Lottery announced Tuesday. Hollywood Casino Perryville, the larger of the two slots parlors, generated $10 million in April, the second-biggest take since its opening in late September. Perryville's per-machine daily revenue in April was $223.38, the casino's best showing in six months. The revenue reflects money the casinos take in after winners are paid but before expenses and other costs are deducted.

Over the past couple of weeks, many commentators have been giving General Electric a hard time for not paying any federal taxes -- when other companies with similar earnings have been paying 35 percent. The company also laid off 18,000 workers while earning billions in profits.  Over the weekend, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) named the company to his list of top 10 worst tax offenders.  "Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS," Sanders' staff wrote in a news release.  Click here to see Sanders' list of corporate tax offenders.

Maia Jones could have been sleeping in on this frosty weekend morning. Instead, the 20-year-old Towson University junior was up and gone early to rake leaves for Beverly Schiff, a total stranger in Northwest Baltimore. She looked a little awkward wielding the rake: "I don't know what I'm doing at all," she confessed. But Jones and her Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority sisters pitched in gamely Sunday with nearly 300 other volunteers to help 95 low-income elderly residents of Northwest Baltimore prepare for winter.

For more than nine years now, Laura Davies has remained two points short of the Hall of Fame under the LPGA's standard for entry. That's equivalent to two wins or one major. Too bad she can't get credit for success on her home continent. The British blaster ran her worldwide total to 75 wins with last week's Ladies European Tour victory in Austria, her third this year after earlier triumphs in New Zealand and Germany. At 46 years and 11 months, Davies also became the oldest champion in LET annals.

The autumn leaves drift by my window,The autumn leaves of red and gold ...Then they land on the lawn, lose their luster and litter our lives for weeks.Leaves, leaves, leaves. Immortalized in verse and song, leaves often fall where they don't belong. They bury gardens, clog gutters and smother newly seeded lawns. Leaves drop in dribs and drabs, at a maddening pace, aggravating homeowners who'd rather sweep in one fell swoop. Alas, it's oaks one week, and maples the next. Weekends are shot through November, at least.

For days last week, Democrats gleefully hammered away at the Republican National Committee's payment of $1,946 for "meals" at a West Hollywood strip club, which led to the firing of a committee staffer and continues to focus unwanted attention on National Chairman Michael Steele's management of the RNC. One jab, in the form of an MSNBC YouTube clip being circulated by the Democratic National Committee, highlights criticism of Steele by Tony Perkins,...

It was obvious to Orioles manager Dave Trembley in the way Kam Mickolio looked when he arrived at the Ed Smith Stadium complex early last week, in the way he popped the catcher's mitt in a bullpen session a couple of days later, and even in the way he performed the post workout running drills Saturday. "I just see a guy with the mind-set this spring where I think he knows what's on the table for him," Trembley said. It is impossible to draw any conclusions from the first week of spring training, when the action is essentially limited to bullpen sessions and pitchers' fielding practice.