May 24, 2003

  • I started the day, while drinking my coffee, by deciding to cut the yard. Dammit, I was going to go and get a fukkin weed whacker and cut those fukkin blades of grass! Can you hear the resolve in my exclamation points? Fuk!

    So I started reading my email, because that’s what I do after (and during) coffee. And someone knocked on my door… My neighbor’s yard guy. He’s this round, sweaty guy, and he asked me, “Did you call for yard service?” I told him I hadn’t called, and I was planning to cut my own yard this very day.

    He quoted me an introductory price of $75 for the front yard. If I had been standing there with my coffee, I would have taken a sip of it just to do a spit take.

    I declined, and as he walked away, he made a point of going through the middle of the yard, which was waist-high. I watched him make a mental note of how high the grass was, and he gave me a smug look… There was still time for him to make the sale.

    Ten minutes later, I was in my car, going to get a weed whacker and some other yard-related stuff. When I came back, I discovered something. If you want to meet your neighbors, you can:

    1) Neglect your lawn.

    2) Finally cut it.

    All I had to do was carry the weed whacker, still in its box, from the car to the garage, and suddenly everyone wanted to know the story of why I hadn’t cut my grass in so long.

    I told my neighbor to the side that the mower was broken, and she lent me hers. So I cut the front yard, since it was the neighborly thing to do.

    I kind of like this neighbor thing, but I also think it’s annoying that our yards are the way we measure each other. Especially since I suck at yard care.

Comments (3)

  • HAH! This cracks me up. Because it’s true. People measure their neighbors by their yard. It’s weeeird.

  • I totally understand the lawn issues!  I hate to mow!  Using the weed eater is even worse! Worse yet is if you have a flower bed, you have to plant and weed and water and prune and feed and so on and so forth!  It is the Devil!  I’ve had actual neighbors offer to mow my yard, its crap.  You might think that my yard looking not so cool would make theirs look better but no, they think if my yard looks not cool it detracts from theirs, its so seriously crap!  I mean I don’t want my yard to look bad but you know even if I mow weekly and water often enough that its green, it isn’t enough, you have to do all kinds of crazy crap, like your some kinda lawn addict.  Did I mention that I live next to the Lawn Nazi?  If I didn’t I live next door to the lawn nazi.  Okay, okay, I’m done.

  • I don’t mind yard care, in fact I’m good at it, better than any other ‘chore’. But it bugs me you gotta conform to this golf-course perfect grass norm to avoid bugging the neighbors. Given that I would never live in the center of a golf course, why the hell would I want my yard to mimic one??

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