Guys, I just have to share/vent/rant/cry for a moment about lawn maintenance. Our lawn is a straight up meadow in the front. Our hedges are out of control. We have a jungle patch in our back yard. For some reason, it’s 100% impossible for us to find a dependable yard guy that isn’t going to charge us $150 to mow our grass and trim our hedges.
Whew, let’s start from the beginning. You may be asking “Why do you need a yard person, anyway?! Cut your own grass!” For the first year we owned Big Brown, Ray cut our grass. Unfortunately, our lawn mower broke, we paid to have it fixed, and then it broke again. We borrowed my dad’s lawn mower and it was stolen, along with our broken one, out of our shed the next day. We were really REALLY poor at the time and replacing my dad’s lawn mower was a stretch. We certainly couldn’t afford to replace ours that didn’t work anyway.
Last summer, after going through several lawn guys, we finally found someone who did a not-so-great job, but showed up regularly so we kept him. He quit yard work in the fall.
We knew we would have to hire someone again for this year, because after Ray’s surgeries and him being sick for so long it wasn’t the best idea for him to do yard work. This summer we’ve gone through a couple of people. One who we paid to mow our grass and trim the hedges and then he never trimmed the hedges. One who made promises to mow and then 32948203984 excuses not to. One who said he got stung by a bee, so he went home. One who quoted us $100 for the yard and then a week later quoted us $200. Hello? Our yard isn’t THAT big. We had another guy who mowed once, and now his mower has been broken for a month.
Why is it so difficult to find a reasonably priced lawn guy who is consistent and does a good job? Over the last few years, we’ve received several letters from the city telling us we have to cut our grass or we’ll be charged $200 a day. They claim our grass is in violation of a city ordinance… which, I mean, it probably is. Guys, I’m over it!! Can we just replace all our grass with rocks or mulch? 😉
If you’re local and have a great lawn guy please send him my way!
UPDATE:
While I absolutely did not write this blog post to coax someone into mowing our grass for us, our good friend Jonny was taking care of our yard before we came home from work. How sweet is that? We really have some great friends. We also were given several names and numbers of reputable yard guys. Thanks, guys!
Well, our garden was doing great for a while… and then we kind of neglected it and it totally died. In June life got busy, we had some lawn woes, and it was 100 degrees on the daily. And to be honest, we just wanted to be lazy most of the time instead of tend to our garden.
(Ray standing in our raised bed that’s mostly full of weeds)
(Even among the weeds, our rosemary is still going strong)
We’re thinking about a fall/winter garden, but that can be kind of tricky in Florida. It’s not unusual to have 90 degree weather in October, but it’s also not unusual to have 40 degree weather in October. If we start this month, I think we can do another round of tomatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic.
