Leave The Leaves

Fall is one of the best times of the year to run. Besides Fall providing a new pallet of colors to view, the late morning temperatures are more than bearable, they are pleasurable. The sun shines as often as in the summer but isn’t as intense. The wardrobe options are plentiful because the weather only requires a t-shirt and shorts. Yes, fall allows you to sleep in on a Saturday morning without worrying about having a heat stroke.

So, that’s what I did. I slept in on Saturday, started cooking a bushel of apples on the stovetop for applesauce and headed out for a barefooted run. It was the perfect setting for a run..

…except one little, er, maybe two little things.

One, since the apples were cooking on the stove I handed responsibility of occasionally stirring the applesauce over to my husband during my run. It’s a 20 quart stock pot full of steaming hot apples. It smells fantastic but it’s not so easy to stir. Thus, there were scorched apples stuck to the bottom of the pan. I supposed I have nothing to complain about since he was the one stuck cleaning the stock pot afterward. Woe is me, my poor apples. Hee hee hee.

The other thing that wasn’t so great about Saturday’s run was a section of sidewalk covered by leaves from a tree that has some type of fungus or disease. The leaves are covered by very hard growths. It was like running through your living room after your kids have forgotten to pick up all their Legos. It was a long section of sidewalk with no way out but to hop through it.

I learned my lesson. It was better to leave the leaves alone and veer into the road (after checking for traffic) than to run over fungus covered leaves. All in all, this run still earned two big toes up and a bowl of applesauce. Yum!