The land of leaves, dust and wind

I decided to try a little more tidying up outside since I felt better. I've been eating Dannon's Activa Yogurt and I think it helped tame the beast. Thank goodness.
It was nice out, probably high 60s, but it's dry as punk and I saw several cracks in the earth all over many parts of the yard. We are down about 4" with the expected rainfall this yard. Even my forsythia don't look quite as glorious as they use to. They also seem to have a lot of dead wood underneath them too.
So I got my woodland garden cleaned out and noticed I have to edge it and weed it sometime soon. Maybe when the kitchen is getting worked on, but hopefully before. It's hard to garden when the earth is so hard. The wind was whipping around and the skies kept getting dark and foreboding and then sunny again. It's been windy for months. We have branches all over the place. I even lost a big main branch off my lilac bush.
It's hard to clean up leaves in the wind too. I had so many things working again me today.
Brian came out and helped a lot. We just dump all the debris down the hill in the back where it will eventually decompose.
My irises all look good in their little semi-circle around the 'crop circle' garden. I cleaned that out too. Something definitely nibbled my big mother tulips, but the alliums look fine. I guess they are leafy and the stalk comes up eventually. I saw no signs of the hibiscus I raised from seed and planted near the irises.
I told Brian the leaves should have been cleaned up better as they were decomposing and killing the lawn. I am not planting grass seed every year. He blamed the lack of grass on the roots from the trees, telling me I was not an expert gardener (I've been gardening since I've been about 15-16). With that, I leaned over and lifted up a wade of decomposing leaves and there was brown earth under it. Case closed.