This is my neighbor Nancy’s silver maple tree. It’s beautiful, and, as you can see, huge. (Click the photo for a larger view.)

It towers over both of our back yards and our shared driveway. In the fall, it sheds its multi-colored leaves and creates a blanket of gold, orange, red, brown and yellow. It’s really a fabulous tree.

This spring, for the first time in the 3 years we’ve lived in our present house, the maple began to grow its special fruit, which I have always called its helicopter seeds. You know, the ones that look like this:

Well, of course, the helicopters fell, as they always do, and created a thick carpet in our back yard. There were thousands of them, literally. You could barely see the grass.

Why is this “obsessive,” you ask?

Wait for it…………

Wait…………..

It’s obsessive, because only my husband would get out the Shop Vac and vacuum them all up. Every last one of them. It took him 5 hours.

I am not making this up.

Obsessive? Eh, maybe. But since he is the coolest of the cool, and because he takes care of everything around here so I don’t have to worry about it, and he anticipates the entire family’s needs, and makes sure I have everything I require before I ever ask for it, and he does all that as well as taking care of his own business…he’s allowed.

Fink out.