Oh come on. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t you remember my Mother’s Day post? The one where I vowed to never have sex again? Or at least for 6 months (I keep trying to convince Travis that the Dr. said 6 months instead of 6 weeks). No, I’m not pregnant. My big announcement is this: I HATE working in my yard.
Last year was the first year we’ve ever had a yard. I very much enjoyed sending my kids out to play in it, and they had a blast on the slip-n-slide for most of May and June until we left for the summer while they tore our house apart. Since I knew we were doing tons of construction, I didn’t give yard work a single thought. What was the point?
In the fall, we hired our ace contractor Met to rip out our yard. He put in a new slate path, and pulled out all the old shrubs, and then we reseeded the lawn. The ripping out and path went well; the reseeding? Not so much. Our lawn looks like it underwent chemotherapy; there are HUGE patches with no grass growing at all, tons of weeds, and about 300 cigarette butts that some idiot keeps throwing in my lawn. I was able to ignore the yard again, because we were getting siding put on, and anything planted would surely be killed by the guys re-siding the house.
So now the siding is done. Today, Travis went out there with the weed whacker and cleaned up what he could, and then I begged him to take the kids to the zoo since our pass is about to expire and there’s no chance I want to take them with a new baby. In exchange, I promised to begin painting our front door and reseed the spots of grass that are bare.
The door went well. I caulked the heck out of it, spray painted the knocker a nice silver color, painted the door jamb white (some joker had decided to paint it red), and taped it up. Tomorrow I will paint it a nice, shiny black.
Then I began the lawn work and it was all downhill from there. What is it that people like about this? My neighbor Tania has been working in her yard for two solid weeks now. Their yard looks fantastic... but come on. There are about 300 other things I would rather be doing with my time... like blogging. Or painting my toenails. Or catching up with PerezHilton.com. Or watching old episodes of Felicity, which is what my mom was doing while “manning the baby”, who slept for 5 hours while I was laboring out in the hot sun.
So I made a decision, right then and there. No more yard work for me. I’m out. Anybody know a good gardener I can call?
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9 comments:
Denham Bros LLC. They do excellent work. They are pretty cheap too. The cost is merely a plane ticket for the owner and his super cool wife.
I know, I didn't get the lawn gene either. Luickly I'm married to Mr. Lawn himself. "CARRIE - GET OFF THE LAWN. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING! YOU CAN'T LAY ON THE LAWN! ARE YOU INSANE?"
I've never had a yard so I have no clue if I'd enjoy it or not. I really want to learn how to do windowboxes though. Have fun with the slip and slide.
We are pretty "into" our yard. I don't like the effort so much as the end result. I love pulling into the driveway and being met by all the color from the flowers, and looking out the windows and seeing them, or the sweet smells. I think there's nothing better than picking something we grew wihtout pesticides, preparing it for my kids and eating it within an hour, it just makes me feel good. More than enything though, I love working in the garden as a parenting tool. We have the kids help us a lot and I love that it is teaching them the value of a hard days work, and delayed gratification - and that it can be fun to all work together. Give it another shot - you might find it's an aquired taste.
It took me a few frustrating years of gardening to learn to enjoy it. I would take Carrie up on her offer and have him landscape it for you. You just then need a can of Preen and picking out what you want in your garden.
I would not pick this year to start the yarding experience- something about that crazy delivery you just had and a newborn to tend to makes me think you JUST might have your fill of new things this year. ;-)
I think your problem is only putting in 50% effort. By doing that you you never really get the full desired result and can't ever see the fruits of your efforts. My suggestion to you is to pick out a few things each month that you will really work on making beautiful/fullfilling. Don't just do a half a'ed job on them, but do it all the way - all the while doing the 50% on the rest of the yard. As it progresses those areas you have done all the way will be simple to maintain if done consistantly and you can devote more time to the problem areas. One other reason I think I appreciate working in the yard so much is that I sit in a no windowed cubicle all week. So the fresh air and sun is a welcome sight. You will never catch me watching tv during the summer if it is still light outside.
ps - Denham Bro's LLC is willing to come and help out, but only if the purse strings are cut loose. I can't have a simple thing like money get in the way of beauty.
PS I don't spell check my comments (oops)
dave, an all-expenses paid trip to new york is yours if you're up for it. i think i've let go of my plan for you to dig a hole to sink a trampoline on... we can just focus on planting perennials and getting the lawn in shape. right now we are only focusing (100%) on the grass. it would be great to get it to where we could focus on it 50% and then devote energy to planting other stuff. maybe this fall. let's plan it.
do you think chris wants to come too? he doesn't seem to have much going on... ha.
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