Each fall, I ask my husband to bag and save most of the grass clippings and leaves he collects as he mows. I encourage him to leave some on the ground to feed the lawn soil, but most of the leaves end up in garbage bags in my garage.

When it looks as if the last leaf has fallen from the linden trees that hang over my gardens from my neighbor's yard, I ask him to gently blow the leaves out of my perennial beds and vacuum them up with his mower. These leaves, too end up in bags in my garage.

Then I hope he doesn't notice when I put them all back.

After the frost, when the last of my perennials has faded, I clean their debris out of my flower beds and gently cover them with the ground-up leaves and grass clippings I have been saving.

There is never enough to go around, but I do my best to get some fresh organic material on the beds that didn't receive any last season.

My dear husband is focused on his lawn, not on my perennial beds, so it is possible he doesn't realize that I am, essentially, undoing all his hard work.

I kind of count on that, actually