Progression of the Leaves

The trees on our street have been putting on a beatiful show the past week + with a colorful array of bright red and golden yellow leaves. Our tree resisted until a day or two ago, when it started turning. Then it got rather windy yesterday...

Our neighbor's tree lost its leaves:

This resulted in a wonderfully crunchy lawn covering for us (not them). I happen to like the leaves, but not everyone else in the house does, so I was planing to rake them up later this week:

Last night I woke up several times from from the howling wind that literally shook the house. I am not a big fan of overly windy days, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the wind had taken care of my chore for me...this was our yard this morning (and our tree, which withheld):

So where did all the leaves go?

The wind deposited them very neatly right on top of my flowerbed:

It's supposed to drop below freezing tonight, so I'm just going to leave (no pun intended) them there and hope they insulate the flowers. It's supposed to be back in the 70's in a few days, so I'm not ready to bid the bright blooms good-bye yet!

At least I didn't wake up to this today, like those up in the mountains did. Good start for the ski season: