I was having a conversation with a coworker the other day about the work I needed to do around the outside of my house this spring, and he commented that he didn’t understand people who enjoyed doing yard work – that he didn’t “get anything out of it”. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not some crack-job who actually ENJOYS going out in the yard and tearing out bushes, or raking for an hour and a half. I don’t throw a bunch of confetti in the air and run around the house cheering every time I have to mow the lawn. But on some lower level, I have to admit that I genuinely like looking at the result of my work. Whether that means I can enjoy the fact that I don’t have some form of ivy bush taking over the fence along half of one side of my property, or the mid-summer step back to say “damn my lawn looks good” and know that my family can enjoy the time we spend outside because of having a healthy, well-maintained lawn… I can say that yes, I do get something out of it.
Today I spent pretty much the entire afternoon and evening raking around my property, taking care not only of what leaves had been trapped under snow most of the winter but also what had been trapped in with the bushes and plants next to the house and also which had piled up in one particular corner of the fence in my backyard under a large cluster of trees. By the end of all of it I took probably 8 huge loads of sticks down to throw in the pond behind out house and filled 10 (ten!) 30gal/50lb bags with leaves which are now sitting next to the garage waiting to be disposed of. After finally removing all of that from the upper layer of my lawn, I also got to drop a load of Scott’s Turf Builder With Halts Crabgrass Preventer on the front and back yards. Depending on who you listen to, that should possibly be dropped after you’ve moved the lawn at least once: but some sources say that isn’t necessary and since we have a day or two of rain on the horizon today was the perfect opportunity to drop the stuff in the ground.
Last year I kept up with some minor upkeep on the lawn, but this year will mark the first year of truly doing what I can to get my lawn in tip-top shape. Beyond that, the wife and I have begun our talks about which plants will be staying or going and all of the plants in front of the house will be getting an overhaul – on top of redoing the edging and just overall trying to clean up the curb appeal of the home while at the same time trying to settling on something without too much maintenance. Neither of us are really “flower people”, so a few bushes and some mulch and I’ll be more than happy. Plus redoing the “island” that contains a dogwood, a holly bush, as well as a few other scraggly overgrown plants will be a nice upgrade as well.
We also will soon be putting a call in to a tree removal service to get estimates on what it would take to remove some of the birches from our property. The trees are nice to look at, but one cluster of three very mature trees was planted two feet from the front corner of the house and the branches above continue to grow out over the roof: one of the trees in the backyard is leaning back towards the house and in fact was touching the sliding glass door during one of the ice storms when it got weighed down: and another one on the side of the house is leaning out towards my neighbor’s house. That final one especially is NOT something I want to deal with if the tree ever fell and landed on my neighbor’s house or car. We didn’t initially plan to make a tree removal process a “big deal”, but as we walked around the yard looking at things we realized just how bad shape all of the birch stands were in around the property. Like many other things in our home, the former owners of 10 years didn’t seem to have done much around the place (they didn’t really let anything fall into a state of disrepair, but it seems like they also didn’t do much in the way of “home improvement” either) and the landscaping was one of those items where that fact really stands out. On the bright side, we likely wouldn’t have to pay for removal since I have at least two friends with wood stoves who would be more than happy to get some birch wood to dry out and burn next year.