I’ve been avoiding a big problem. And this week my vacation forced me to face it.  Blankets, literally blankets of brown leaves (mostly oak but also beech and sycamore and buckeye and you name it) have been smothering our yard for months.  Why didn’t I rake them in November?  I tried, but the tall trees that surround our house just laughed at me—every year they do that—and the leaves kept falling and blowing in.  Then the rain and then the snow packed them down into those huge brown blankets.