Thursday, May 06, 2004

Our Own Yard

My husband and I recently bought our first home and we've been in it for about 10 months. So each season is new for us. I have some thoughts about it all.

First, each season brings with it tons (tons) of work. Winterizing your house, raking leaves, shovelling snow, mowing the lawn, clearing out the flower beds, preparing soil for a garden. Second, each season comes around very quickly. It seems that Todd just drained the sprinklers and closed up the swamp cooler. Now they're both up and running again. It seems to me that if you do that much work, it should last for a while. But it doesn't.

So here's what: we've been doing a lot of work in our yard. It feels like a lot. But our yard looks terrible. It's covered with ratty old grass (which we've been raking out), wilted blossoms from our fruit trees, tall grass around the edges where our mower can't reach, bits of cardboard, plastic and styrofoam that blows in from who knows where.

And the other day a friend of mine came over. She was friends with our home's previous owner. We walked to the backyard, she looked around and said, "Jeanne really kept that border up. It must have been a lot of work." Yes, it must have been a lot of work. She was an elderly widow in good health. All she had to do was take care of her yard. She did not work and she did not have a two year old. Of course she could "keep that border up."

I just wonder how other people can have such nice looking yards. Do they spend all their time on it? OR do they pay someone? Good grief.