Yard Work Thoughts

The other evening I was out toiling in my yard edging along the gardens, back patio and driveway. Meanwhile, the lawn service guys were parked in front of my house working on three houses at once - both of my next door neighbors and my diagonal-across neighbor.

While I was happily thinking about how much money I was saving doing my own yard work, I remembered that earlier in the summer I signed up for the Frugalwoods Uber Frugal Month challenge. I wrote a post Goodbye June Hello July where I mentioned that. Here it is the middle of August and I am finally getting a chance to follow up.

With that being said, I have to say that I enjoyed many of the 31 articles that I read last month. Liz aka Mrs. Frugalwoods is an excellent writer, and really makes some great points. Plus her two little girls are adorable! I decided to go back and look at my inbox and find a post that was most relevant to my yard work.

In the post “Empower Yourself “, Liz talks about the pervasiveness in our culture that we can't do anything for ourselves. Some examples: cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, shoveling or snowblowing the driveway, learning to cook and fix things, even making your own coffee. Obviously, the benefits of doing for oneself are multi-faceted: saving money, learning and honing skills, and the pride and satisfaction of doing it yourself. I have another one: free exercise!

So here was my real life example. The head lawn service guy said "Want to come work for us?" which is kind of his tag line since he's said that to my husband as well. 

My husband and I are a good team - he likes big work with big results, like mowing. I do the detail work - like edging and flowers and getting that manicured look. I think our house looks as good as the neighbors (the head guy must think so since he keeps offering us jobs) and we can proudly say we did it ourselves.

Not my garden; this is from the park next to work 

I have to mention Summer of course. Our yard is not fenced but I can let her out; as long as I hang with her she won't run away. She was just being too friendly with the lawn care workers aka: bothering them, so I had to tie her to her lead at the top of the driveway. She can go in and out of the garage, play with her toys and watch the activity all at the same time. She especially loves watching the neighbor kids come out and play soccer on their front lawn.

All of a sudden I look up from my yard work and there is Summer taking a potty break on the lawn.  Obviously I did a poor job attaching her lead to her leash! Well she didn't run off and I took that as a sign that we were both done for the night.

Cheers!