So far, my autumn raking has been a month-long chore, off and on, but it was mostly getting all the leaves and sticks out from under big bushes like forsythias. The debris had been building up for the last couple of years and this year. Luckily, most of the time I was working in fairly warm weather, and dry for this time of the year, and I enjoyed being able to be there. Of course, the schedule was work for a while, then rest, then work for a while, then rest, etc. That's OK. I'm just glad I felt like doing it at all. After all, October was always my favorite month of the year - so beautiful! Even as I worked, I noticed all the gorgeous leaves still on the trees, and already on the grass.

It made me think of the times my young granddaughters gave me presents of "rainbows" (their terms) of leaves when I was at their home. We loved to find so many different colors and shapes of leaves on our short walks in their neighborhood.

Sometimes, I think there are more leaves inside my house than outside, because if you have a very hairy dog who is put outside in her dog yard, which is attached to the garage, and the dog yard is always full of leaves, even if I have raked it all up the day before, they're bound to attach themselves all over her body before she comes running in. Good thing I like leaves!

So, anyway, for the first pickup of bags of leaves by the Attleboro Yard Waste Collection, I had filled a dozen bags, three just of sticks and cut-up branches that had fallen off my trees.

Now that most of the leaves are off the trees, I'll be raking a lot more. Actually, the ride-on lawn mower, driven by my grandson, will cut up a lot, but there are places where the wind gets pile-ups in areas around the house and yard. I won't enjoy this as much. I hate the cold weather coming in now. Maybe I'll have another dozen bags for the next pick-up in December. Maybe not.

Personal Observances XIII

Even Dennis Stanton, a wily, somewhat not-so-righteous friend of Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote, talked to his departed wife's photo about what was going on in his life, and asking her advice, but then telling her what he was going to do, anyway. Do all widows and widowers do that with their departed loved ones? I do. Casual conversations with friends seem to verify it. It's hard to disconnect with the one we've lived with all our life, loved, and wanted his advice and indications. Those feelings make a difference in our actions.

When I was working at the admission booth at Winslow Farm in Norton this fall, a sanctuary for formerly abused or neglected animals, a man come in and said there was a peacock loose in the street and dodging traffic. I immediately found two teenage volunteers and they ran out - they knew what to do - to try to catch him.

I watched what I could of the rescue while other customers came in. They got him!

Another thing to add to my "shake my head about" list, besides trash thrown from cars, graffiti, and cruelty to man or beast, is when I read a page in a book that has an obvious error. I can understand a newspaper having that (it's such an immediate deadline - if my column had to be written every day for the next day, I'd probably have a dozen errors in it) but a book? Don't they have at least one person editing it? Recently a sentence I was reading said, "Chick would would have the lucre in his hands." (Even my computer underlined that sentence just now.) I rest my case.

After the end of a mystery book I was reading, The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie, there was a reminder to readers where the title came from: an incident in Revelations in the Bible.

I'm glad they mentioned that or I'd have fallen off the couch when I got to it. I was only in Thessalonians in my journey through the Bible this time. I'd forgotten that part of Revelations. There's a lot to remember - and forget - in that book.

BETTY STEVENSON is a community columnist. Her commentary appears every other Monday.