Raking it in.

Well.  I tried last year, and failed.  I thought I'd try again.  Raking up the leaves is a pretty tall order if you happen to have an orchard.

It's also not that straightforward when you have children.  They do sometimes like attention.
What complicates things further is the chicken population.  When they insist on going up to your carefully piled leaves and kicking them all over the place...

... you start fantasising about pies.  (Not really, I love our hens!)
But this was as far as I got before Little Boy demanded my attention, and the sun went down (thus the different exposure - my phone camera struggled with the light)

Not bad.  Probably nudging a couple of hours work.  Saves going to the gym (and I can't really take the boys with me to the gym, but I can have them in the garden!)

It's the fork that counts.

I don't know how I can joke about it really.  It's actually quite sad.

I was tidying up the front bed this morning, when disaster struck.  Either the ground is too hard, or I am.  Or perhaps a combination of the two.  Either way, the fork wasn't up to the battle, and gave way.  It was a nice border fork too.  Ok, so the tines weren't exactly in line any more, and the top of the handle could pinch your hand something rotten, but it still had a good few years service under its belt. 
The silver lining is that I now have a large hand fork (or will, once I've separated the handle completely) as well as a dibber perfect for planting leeks.
What's more, I could also get a nice new fork from Christmas.  It is approaching apace, after all.