Raking leaves at my house is a big ordeal each year. When I heard the forecast for a fast-sweeping hurricane last Saturday, followed by a beautiful day on Sunday, my first thought was, great! All the leaves will come down once and for all, and Sunday will be the day to rake them all up. I’ll put my gardens to bed and haul in the garden hoses, pots and summer furniture. This year, I thought, I’ll transition to the next season quickly. Think again.

Though Sunday was a beautiful day, Saturday’s hurricane didn’t materialize as expected so there were still lots of leaves left on the trees. As it turned out, only half of the leaves could be tended to – so much for a fast sweep of the leaves. Three big sugar maples on a half-acre lot translate to lots of leaves.

I have three able-bodied boys and a husband to help. The easy solution would be to get everyone out there with a rake, put the leaves in piles, bag them up in the special biodegradable leaf bags and call the job done.

But in the gardening and composting world, I’ve been told that maple leaves are considered gold, though so far I’ve never had anyone begging for my golden treasures. While my husband steers clear of my whole leave-raking process, wishing that just once I’d rake leaves the way normal people do, my kids know no other way. They’re great participants in the complex process I’ve developed, and all the while I promise that next year’s garden will be great because of our efforts.

With four compost bins filled to the brim, there’s no room in the bins to compost the leaves. My son pulverizes them with the lawn mower in preparation for another job – protective blanket for the perennial beds. To make sure that they stay in place, we put seaweed gathered from the beach on top of the beds. Come spring, the seaweed will be mulched down and worked into the soil, and the bed of leaves will make its way to the compost bins. If I were a disciplined compost-bin stirrer, the process would happen quicker, and if I could find a way to collect vegetable and fruit scraps inside without attracting fruit flies and moths, these scraps would break the bin down even quicker. That’s the cycle of natural gardening, which makes the most of abundantly plentiful natural resources in the back yard and neighborhood.

This time of year, I also usually yank out the summer window-box flowers and fill them with red berries and evergreens gathered from nearby woods. The holidays are right around the corner and the window boxes take on a festive seasonal look. But this year, my geraniums are thriving and in bloom. This has caused a dilemma with my seasonal transition.

I’ve tried to winter over geraniums by pulling their roots and bringing them inside to a cool dark spot, but I’ve never been successful. I’ve decided to transplant some of the window-box geraniums into pots, hoping that they’ll grow as indoor house plants this winter. We’ll see how long that lasts. When it comes to houseplants, I do much better with the plastic variety. Each spring, I spend a small fortune buying new ivy geraniums. If I could pull this off, I’ll be really proud. Remembering to water is key – and this is something that I’m terrible at, no matter the season.

In the summer, outside gardens are tended to by soaker hoses, automatic watering timers and Mother Nature, so my neglectful watering practices are more than compensated. This system won’t work indoors. These poor geraniums will be entirely dependent on me. And that’s enough to scare any plant to death, not to mention, frighten me, too. But I’ll try my best.

By spring, they may well sport the life-support look, with pasty light green leaves and scraggly stems. But the thought of a resurrected geranium flourishing again in my window box is reason enough to give this a try.