Lawn Care
My current passion is taking care of my lawn at the Darien house. It's pretty much eaten up the past couple weekends for me (or at least Saturday/Sunday afternoons) as well as some weekday evenings, but actually I don't seem to mind spending so much time working on it.
More than one person has asked me - "why don't you guys just pay someone to do it?" Well, first of all, why pay someone to do something you can do yourself? But more importantly, I'm thinking that if you put your own time and energy into working on your own lawn, it will be more rewarding in the end to see results. At least that's the hope.
See, I used to just be responsible for mowing the lawn. There's not much to mowing the lawn, except pushing a loud vibrating machine around and trying not to cut crooked patterns where it looks too ugly. Even though I never hated doing it, it was still basically a chore. Now that I take responsibility for the whole process, I'm finding that yard work can actually be kind of fun.
I know that makes me sound like a loser, but seriously, I'm finding myself actually looking forward to spending more time on yard work. It's like a sort of escape from the rest of my week. For a few hours, I don't have to deal with anyone else, I don't have to think about anything other than the grass in front of me. I don't have to worry about whether or not I have the skills or knowledge to do what I'm doing, because I know that lawn care is something you probably don't even need to finish high school to do. And maybe the best thing is, I'm not spending all my time sitting in front of a computer, or watching TV, I'm outside enjoying the sunny weather like human beings were meant to.
The main challenge so far has been trying to patch up some bald spots in the front yard where the grass died last year. The guy at Home Depot recommended this bag of stuff which has a mix of fertilizer, compost, and seeds which you use to cover up the spot and water it until it grows. According to the bag, there should be some signs of growth within 7-14 days. So far, it's been 9 days, but I don't see anything yet, so if nothing's shown up by this weekend, I will be one unhappy mofo.
The next task ahead will be to kill the weeds and spread some fertilizer. Fertilizing is cool. Maybe I shall trim the edges too.
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- Speaking of Home Depot, about a year ago I added them to my blacklist after they didn't put Wet Paint signs on their ground posts and I permanently stained my favorite pants by leaning on one of the posts. Well, I think now I need to back off a little from my original rage, because lately I have found that the people working there are so very helpful and friendly. At least the one in Darien is good. Maybe I'll still hang on to my bitterness against the Palatine Home Depot for now and see where that takes me.
- The other day, I filled up my car with my normal gas and the total came to more than $40. I don't know if this is a record for me, but I don't remember ever paying $40 for a tank of gas. I guess even when the news was all reporting about high gas prices, I still never gave it much thought. But $40 caught my attention, it seems like a lot to pay for one fillup especially since I'm not driving a huge SUV or anything. Although the 17-18 gallons my car holds is probably bigger than your normal 4-door sedan's tank. Still.... $40? I thought we were gonna rob those Iraqis blind of their oil, what happened to that master plan?
- Latest voice in my head: "This bores me... Would any of you like to play a game of basketball?" - Prince (played by Dave Chappelle)
