My nightmare has come true

When I was younger I had to care for my family's yard. Really all that meant was I mowed and ran the weed eater. I hated it. I wanted to go play basketball. So I swore that I would never be someone who cared about my yard. I was always trying to talk my dad into buying a more expensive nicer mower. He never really did. Now as I was thinking about buying a mower we were talking on the phone and he said to "spend a little more and get one that mulches". Of course I just wanted the cheapest thing I could find. Back then I wanted to just rip all the grass out and install astro turf. Well I'm still all for the astro turf but it's expensive and my wife thinks it's ugly. So I'm stuck trying to make what I have look good. Unfortunately the people who lived here before us put in a bunch of lava rocks. The bed of rocks just collects leaves and small sticks. I spent the morning picking sticks. It looks like I never even started. Here is a picture to show you how many sticks I picked up this morning.

Look past the big pile and the cute kid and you can see the lava rocks and the ton of sticks that are still in it. There has to be a better way to get them out of there.