Come this time of year the streets in my neighborhood begin piling up with bags of raked leaves. This morning I happened to be sipping a cup of coffee at sunrise on my front porch. From somewhere through the early fog, I heard what I thought was a garbage truck making its rounds. To my surprise, an old flat-bed backed up my dead-end street. Several kids worked silently around the truck, ghostly figures that moved easily among the discarded bags of my neighbors’ leaves, tossing them onto the flat-bed. Curious, I approached the eerie procession and asked the elderly driver what they were going to do with all the bags of leaves.
“We own a family landscaping business,” he said. “Each fall we rescue leaves from neighborhoods like this one. Then we compost the leaves over the winter and sell them as leaf mulch in the late spring and early summer.”
I fell asleep that evening thinking about leaves being “rescued” from the landfill, and dreaming, for some reason, about the Howdy Doody character Princess Winterspring Summerfall.
HEY, KIDS… WHAT TIME IS IT?
Tim says: Every once in a while I blunder into a website that yanks me back so forcefully to the past that I have to share it with someone. While researching “A Rescue of Leaves”, in which I mention the Howdy Doody character Princess Winterspring Summerfall (also known as Summer Fall Winter Spring — tale your pick), I stumbled across a web site that is sure to put a smile on anyone’s face who can still remember the fifties.
My husband (who is MUCH older than me) still has his original Howdy Doody doll with moving jaw from the 50’s!
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Amazing. Must be worth a bit of money. No matter how MUCH older he is. 🙂
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Your timing is impeccable, Tim.
This morning I met a neighbour of mine, Genevieve, as she was coming in with some brilliant fall leaves – red, orange,yellow, burgundy, brown oak.
She informed me that she was preserving them and I followed her back to her place and she showed me how to waxpaper them.
I had not done that in many, MANY years.
This evening I was somehow bored and did the leaves and will be sending them to British Columbia and other places where there is not such a brilliant Fall show as here in Eastern Canada.
I think reading your post early in the morning got me thinking in that direction.
So, yes, I did “rescue” some leaves and will be sending them on to delight friends and family in distant places.
Timothy from Canada
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Wasn’t it Summerfall Winterspring? Well, I was pretty young….
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Thanks for the youtube link! I loved Howdy Doody as a kid. Got a grin looking at some old episodes – I miss the days when the most violent thing on kid’s TV was Clarabell’s seltzer bottle.
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Hmmm. I recall Andy Devine’s Buster Brown Show’s “Froggie” was kinda borderline. “Twang your magic Clanger, Froggie!”
“Hey, ya, hey, ya, hey ya!”
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Tim…. She had TWO names (kinda first and last, I guess…) It was
Princess Summerfall Winterspring.
Be like calling you Lee Tim.
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I love your blogs! The make me smile.
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Thank you, Maureen.
Smiling is good for you.
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I think her name was Summerfallwinterspring…I also remember Dillydally ,Mr. Bluster, Flubbadub and chief Thundeerthud. I never missed a show.
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