Leaves fallen, growing

The seasons in my garden are very mixed up right now.  The first flowering of spring irises has already passed in a swathe of purple, and one round of jonquils has bloomed too.  But the guava tree is holding on to its red dead leaves, and the silky oak is dropping grey shrivelled ones daily.  All the green things are very very green thanks to bathtubs (not buckets) of winter rain, and I have lost a branch from the oriental tree, and two from the oak, to the Cape of Storms storms we've had in the last week.  All this has sent me outside today in my good work shoes (no reason) with a wheelbarrow and a rake, picking up the leaves that had been heaped before the last storm, and now look like rice flung by storm guests over a chilly winter bride-garden.  It works like this: rake, heap, bend, gather, dump in barrow, wheel, throw out into compost heap.  Over and over.  This is surely comforting, for the obvious reasons: things live, they die, we clean them up, new things grow.  If I remembered this more often, I would get less stressed and wound up about my life.