The first two things that come to mind, when the first crisp days of autumn arrive, are apple-picking and leaf-raking. From about the time I was in third grade, my mother would admonish us to come straight home from school because there were apples to pick, or leaves to rake. Before that, we lived in a house on a large double lot where my dad had planted nearly all the yard with a garden, we had no fruit trees and only two tall elms in the front of the house near the street.
