(skip to the dotted lines to skip my belly aching and get to the question)

I know there places where the idea of having to fend off the ever persistent progression of nature seems like some weird, easy thing that isn't worth complaining about. I used to live in one of those places. A place that was so hot green things died if they ever had the bad idea to start living in the first place.

A while back I decided I had enough of the heat and moved. Then I purchased a house, and bought all that yard working responsibility along with it. After a few years its become quite obvious I have no idea what I am doing, and the yard is winning.

Trees started springing up along the fence line, and as it turns out its not enough to cut them down. They just keep growing, and then the root gets bigger, tougher, and more suborn. I've taken a chisel and fist fulls of salt to the roots, but I still have wood stuck in the chain link I have no idea how to remove, and new stuff just keeps growing.

Then the crab grass started taking over. As soon as the hot days come it starts growing like crazy killing off all the good grass. I've tried product on it, I guess its not working because there are two inch long tufts everywhere that didn't even exist two days ago.

I wouldn't feel so bad about it, but my neighbor seems to be the neighborhood super lawn star. His lawn is perfect, pure healthy grass year round. And some how he has put up some magical barrier that keeps my crab grass from getting into his yard. The difference between
our yards shocking, and makes me wonder how its even possible we share the same dirt. I have no idea why my weed utopia hasn't started taking over his yard, but whatever he is doing it seems to work, and he seems to enjoy it, which boggles my mind.

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So the question how do you feel about yard work? Its it enjoyable or a chore? What have you learned that served you well, and were there things you tried that just didn't work?

Honestly, it really depends what you make of it. If you've got quality equipment that tends to help. But, ultimately, it comes down to how you approach it. If you approach it as a miserable chore that's what it's going to be. If you approach it as a time to relax outside that's usually what you get.

Of course, that doesn't really apply when things like allergies get in the way.

Swearing incoming (for the sensitive)





FUCK YARD WORK. I never, never, never wanted a fucking yard and for over a decade I always bought one for my useless fucking ex-wife. "Oh, I want a yard we can do stuff with, I want to garden!" Yeah, fucking joke. The only bigger joke was me believing, "if we get the puppy I'll shovel up so you never have to." I shoveled every fucking shit that dog took. One time she came out (feeling guilty no doubt) and with much complaint and bellyaching shoveled 2 piles of doggie duke into the pail. While I shoveled the rest of the yard, then moved the god-damned-trampoline no one ever fucking used and mowed that mother fucker (running over more dog shit in the process). Then I'd haul out the dead tomato plants she never fucking picked (because apparently there are icky bugs and spiders in the yard, who fucking knew?!) pick the rotting fruit off the ground and then haul the 300 pound yard debris container to the curb.

That's how yard work generally went for me. Fuck yard work, I never wanted a fucking yard. I rent a condo now, people come and leaf blow and rake out the flower beds. I never have to haul heavy piles of leaves, dogshit, or misc. plant matter to the curb or bin. Someone power washed my front walk and my deck, all I have to do is haul my mats and deck chairs out of the way. They repaint the fucking lines in my parking lot once a year and I park next door for a day (oh yeah, they repave every 2 years too). There's nice flower beds that never have weeds silently laughing at me from between the shit that's supposed to be there and it doesn't cost me fucking 40 bucks because "I love hydrangias!" whatever teh fucking fuck a hydrangia is.

I have one house plant that won't die as long as I remember to water it once every 6 months or so. I buy cut flowers and put them in a vase every 2 weeks on my dining room table. An extra rinse and snip midweek means I have fresh flowers for 7 bucks and 5 minutes of work per week.

I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER AND NEVER WANT A YARD AGAIN.

Grr! Excuse me while I wipe this foam off... oh yeah, FUCK YARD WORK.

Well, my dad was a landscaper by trade since he was 14 well until he died and I started to help him at the age of 6. I learned much from working with him and I think I can help your problems with my expertise (I guess it is by now). Me and the illegals we worked with used a special weed killer that was organic that worked (i forgot the name) well on most of the problems in this case. With tree roots it's best to get a shovel and circle around it and have a few friends either tear it apart and remove it with saws or with a truck and rope. Also, use a good mulch if you tend to garden. Hope this helps.

My philosophy in life has always been "always work smart and only work hard if you have to".

Therefore, I hate lawns with a passion (if ever I got stuck with a lawn, I'd try to replace the grass with lichen or something like that... I'd probably have more fun looking for an alternative than repetitively take care of the stupid grass which I consider is an foppish urban "I'm masturbating my ego" weed anyways) and don't believe in gardening unless it's to grow food that you will eat or if you are very passionate about flowers.

The less time I hate to put into maintaining my living space and property, the more I have to put into other endeavors I consider more worthwhile.

I only have the weekends to do everything it has to be done in home, so yard work (600m2 of yard, aprox.) is a chore: it steals time I need for other stuff; like resting, for example.

Your Yard wasn't all that bad, because this story gave me a nice big grin. :-)

Luckily for me, I live in a flat. So most of mine "yard" work is when mine mother decides to fool around with potted plants from the terrace.

However, I get in a ton of s**t during summer, when we go to our house in the countryside. There I have a yard that has approximately 3000 m2. And since no one lives there it is generally filled with one year old weed. Weed that is mostly taller than me. Plus orchard with some 80 or so trees of plums, apples and cherries that need to be taken care of.

Since only thing I have is some old and crappy hand tools it takes me a month of work on 30+ degrees just to make it look half decent.

I'm so glad I live in a flat. I have to tolarate lawn mowers and leaf blowers that are often roused at 7 a.m. on the dot and then rush under my window - or so it seems anyway - and when one is moving further away, another one comes around the corner of the neighbouring block of flats to pester me further. But at least I don't have to do the work myself. Don't think Finnish winters bring any relief from the noise as snow ploughs and gritters make all the sounds of the industrial revolution... but, again, it's not me doing the work, and for that I am grateful.

If I ever have to have a lawn, I'll napalm the living shit out of it and replace it with a Japanese-style gravel garden. Possibly with a pond. I think that might be too much work already. Fuck residual value.

You've probably thought about these things way more than I have, but I'll throw an idea out here anyway. There are these grass in my island we just call Japanese grass, and they grow so clumped together that hardly any weeds push through. I THINK it is a type of Zoysia, maybe the Zoysia Japonica...
They grow super-dense, like artifical-soccer-field-grass-dense. I've seen areas where they grow into lots of ugly mini-hills but others seem to grow really flat and nice (may be a different type). They're pretty sharp, so you don't want to play there without shoes on, but they beat weeds in taking nutrients and space, and they don't grow much so you hardly ever need to mow them (if ever).

I lived my whole childhood and teenage years in a one-family house ("omakotitalo") with a pretty big lawn by local standards, so even though Finnish summer is pretty short, I became quite familiar with yard work like mowing the lawn and raking leaves (does shoveling of snow in winter count as well?).

We also had some strawberries, black/red currants, rapsberries, cherries, potatoes etc. growing in a small patch of land in the backyard, which caused some work too. They were mostly taken care by my mother, but she did send me to take care of them every now and then too. I even managed to grow a couple of corn cobs one summer, ate them too. I was kinda proud of that achievement, I didn't even know corn could grow in here.

I hated the yard work. Nowadays as I live in a flat, I am so happy someone else is paid to take care of the common yard and lawn. But even today, I still have to mow the lawn and shovel snow at my mother's home every now and then, so I am not completely free.

My gf wants a yard to grow vegetables, flowers and skit, though. Last and this summer she's been growing e.g. tomatoes and cucumbers in our balcony. That'll do for now.

If I could pay someone I'd be on that wagon in a second.

The people next door have a garden, and the people next to them have a giant garden bigger than my house. They all seem to go out there and make a regular family thing of it. I envy them to a point at being able to make it into a positive, but after going to work and trying to keep the inside of the house clean, dealing with the outside is just not interesting.

To top it all off, through some weirdness my whole street has unusually large back yards for a suburb. About 2.5x the size and half of it is solid trees raining surprises on my yard. Sticks, spiders, and branches. At least we can get away with burning for now because I've had down tree limbs I don't know what I would do with otherwise.

Half our garden is veggies and herbs for an hours work a week I have food I don't have to go out and buy and put up with goddamn sales assistants. If I could I'd get some animals too those few minutes a day to feed etc would be well worth the meat and time outside of supermarkets -.-

(the other half is wild flowers the half I plant changes each year ;) )

I enjoy it, for the most part. Not to the point that I get all crazy about it, but there's something about the near-instant results you get from simply mowing and trimming, and even from planting flowers and such, that brings quick satisfaction. Even better, almost everything is in full bloom right now so the plants look fantastic.

We do cheat and have a weed preventive service come around four times throughout spring and summer. And I have to use some weed killer stuff on this noxious plant that keeps coming up around the edge of one side of the house and that is desperately trying to spread all over the place. I'm thinking it's the northern cousin of kudzu. ; )

We have two medium-size dogs now (50-75 pounds) that do a pretty decent job of tearing up the lawn. When those two are chasing each other around, we cringe seeing those chunks of turf being flung off their back claws as they dig in to make the sharp turns. And one of them has picked a spot, conveniently right in the middle of the lawn, to tear up the grass and make it into her cool spot.

One 'problem' we have now is that the earth up here is a bit too fertile and the planted flowers are spreading like mad, either by getting individually enormous or by spreading via the roots and sprouting new plants - one bed of iris, with about a dozen plants, has turned into a jungle of iris within just two years. We need to dig up and split a fair number of them this fall, and either give them away or use them for mulch. I keep telling myself that we should remove the flowers from one of the beds and turn it into a spot for herbs and maybe a few veggies. Would be pretty cool to have a few tomatoes, peppers, and green onions, along with basil, thyme, and the rest. Might start out small with some potted herbs.