It was a sunny and pleasant Sunday. I thought that everyone should come out to enjoy it. Since the fallen leaves had piled up in our yard, I asked the whole family to come out and help me rake up leaves.
Everyone came out, including Grandpa. Nicholas, Justin and I took turns to rake the yard, and everyone participated in loading the leaves into two compost bags, two trash bags, and one trash can. Within half an hour we were done. We enjoyed the fresh air and moved some muscles from the light labor.
In the afternoon, while I was working on my computer, I suddenly noticed that I did not have my wedding ring on my finger! Where could it be?? I never take my wedding ring off my finger. So it could not have been misplaced.
Thinking back my day - the only time the ring could have slipped out of my finger was during yard work, when I took off the gloves I wore to let Nicholas have them. The ring might somehow have slipped out and fell into the grass. I went out to the front yard looking, seeing leaves scattered on the ground. This was going to be difficult, like finding needle in a hay stack. Perhaps the ring fell into piles of leaves and went in the composite bag with the leaves?
What to do now? Searching the ring in the bags? Looking for a small ring in a big bag of leaves? Grandma said go looking for it. Grandpa said that would be too hard, and it was not too expensive to replace it.
The ring is our 10 year wedding anniversary band - I didn't want to give up on it without trying. So I went to the back yard, unload the leaves from a bag onto the drive way - screening the leaves one fistful at a time. Nicholas came out to help, grandpa came out as well.
It was tedious and tiring. We went through only half bag of the leaves in 10 minutes. What about burning the leaves? It might be faster. I located a large flower pot and use it as a burning pit. Unfortunately the leaves were damp or wet, they wouldn't burn well and produced huge smokes. I put some papers in as pilot, and the flame suddenly grew - the plastic pot itself was on fire! At that moment, Lily was smoked out of the house. She grabbed a bucket and doused the fire right away. She also noticed that we'd been searching the wrong bag. The ring was more likely to be in the other bag, the one Nicholas and I packed.
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| packed, unpacked, repacked the Home Depot bags |
I continued to check through the remaining leaves in the first bag on the drive way, seemingly a futile effort. Not giving up just yet, Lily said, "since you did the first bag already, why not go through the second bag of leaves anyway?" She poured leaves from the second bag on the drive way, started looking through leaves for the ring. Grandpa went to help her as I was about finishing up the first pile.
Lily unloaded the second bag of leaves and started to put leaves back in handful at a time. Grandpa started from the other end, spreading the leaves and looking for the ring. After repacking two thirds of the leaves back in the bag, Lily was about to give up. Suddenly we heard a small sound of metal clinking. My ring appeared on the driveway concrete right by Grandpa's foot. He chuckled, and we were ecstatic!
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| The lost and found ring |
I wiped clean the ring and put it back on.
I guess that desire and determination to try to find it, meticulously looking, a lot of patience, and our good luck combined made it happen.
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