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The surgeon was a taciturn fellow but he was calm and had a lot of experi- ence. I liked him immediately. I liked him even more when he told me that I did not need his services.

Surgeons usually want to cut. Right? I was pretty anxious. This kind of procedure is difficult. There are unforeseen problems.  Anything could happen. It’s very expensive, too. Best-case scenario, you get a couple of cords of firewood. You can’t imagine my relief when he said my tree didn’t need to come down.

Old houses come with old trees and I have several towering over my three-story barn of a place, shading us from the summer sun and lifting their leafy arms to pray, as the poet Joyce Kilmer noted.  I called the tree surgeon because I have an enormous white oak tree on my front lawn and I got worried that one of those leafy arms might land on a Honda Civic. Hurricane Floyd came through in 1999 and my white oak swayed like a royal palm, but other than a few small branches falling off, it was fine.  Maryland’s fabled Wye Oak fell in 2002, but mine stood tall. Still, I worried. My wife thinks that I might have too much time on my hands.

The tree surgeon guessed my oak might be at least 200 years old, perhaps older. The good news was that it was in splendid health.  The bad news was that it would continue to generate truckloads of leaves until I depart this vale for Broadmead. The tree was here when the British bombarded Fort McHenry. A real estate agent might find that factoid valuable. If I ever sell the house I will have the listing note that “the property contains venerable white oak tree that withstood the bombing of Fort McHenry.”  That has a nice ring to it.  It’s not “George Washington slept here” but it’s got a little panache.

Still, there is the matter of leaves. In ancient times, the city in its munificence collected leaves. We once had lamp lighters, too, and horse-drawn cabs.  All you had to do was rake the leaves down to the edge of the street and they would be removed by elves. I would like to believe that will happen again. I would like to believe a lot of things. But in the meantime the leaves are my problem.

The first year that I owned my old house I went boldly forth with rake in hand. I put on a red-and-black plaid Woolrich coat that’s as old as I am. My wife joined me. So did our daughter. Family fun! Raking the leaves! Perhaps there’d be cider and doughnuts? It reminded me of my childhood in Maine.

Alas, my autumnal reverie did not last long. My wife had other things to do. My daughter had homework. I raked on alone. No cider. No doughnuts. The next morning you could not tell that I had spent eight hours raking. Leaves were everywhere. I felt like Sisyphus. I never made that mistake again.

It was from this experience that I concluded that I lived in a part of the city where people were very religious. I hadn’t noticed it before. I’m a heathen, I suppose.  But I found myself surrounded by many devout folks who believe— as Kilmer said— that only God can make a tree. And the most devout of them believe that only God can remove the leaves, too. They normally wait for the Lord to send a mighty wind to make the leaves go away.  The wind just blows the leaves onto someone else’s property. 

I can tell you when we had our last frost and our first frost last year. I know exactly how much snow fell. Others may check the late sports results in the morning newspaper, or glance at the headlines first. I go straight to the rain gauge in the weather report. I look at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Web site before I shave. Thanks to the blessings of Doppler radar I am never without up-to-the-minute meteorological information. I don’t watch much TV, but I watch the Weather Channel. You can have Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Larry King.  I’ll take Jim Cantore, thank you.

If it’s raining in Frederick I know it. I’m prepared. I track storms across the region as they approach. Others monitor the stock market, keeping an eye on the Dow. Me, I’m watching a line of storms in West Virginia that I don’t like the looks of. I know when to close the windows. As for leaving the house without an umbrella, I’ve got 20 umbrellas. My wife thinks this might be a sign of a personality disorder. She thinks I need medication. Or maybe I should just drink decaf? 

Say what you like about global warming, but every year the frost comes later. And the leaves fall later, too. I know this because I grew up in a very rural area where we noticed such things. My wife says this is where my “Mr. Wilsonish tendencies” originate. Remember Mr. Wilson? He lived next door to Dennis the Menace. But I also have the canceled checks from the lawn service that now removes the leaves to prove it. It’s a fact. The last few years it’s been early December before the leaves were all down.

We have winters without snow. We have summers without heat waves. We have seasons without rain. But we always have leaves.