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Yard work- have it done or do you do it yourself?


mead107

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I mow my lawn plus my 2 neighbors. I mulch my leaves but I have my friend and his crew come in to do spring clean up. I pulled out all the shrubs this past summer and will landscape this spring.

Need to have driveway resurfaced and from edge of garage floor fixed. Need 10 sq feet of sidewalk and new driveway apron done. Lots of work for spring and summer.

Want the house ready to sell in 18.

 

Then a condo. Then have to decide if moving next to the patriots is something I want to do.

 

What do you do ?

What are you plans outside?

Edited by mead107
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I told myself i would never be the person that bought a home and paid someone to cut my lawn or mulch my flower beds....since having our baby last January my outlook on this has changed. Last year due to time constraints i had someone do a spring clean up...i still cut my own lawn but i will be hiring a service to mulch and do another cleanup this year...big time saver for me to be with the family instead.

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I mow my lawn plus my 2 neighbors. I mulch my leaves but I have my friend and his crew come in to do spring clean up. I pulled out all the shrubs this past summer and will landscape this spring.

Need to have driveway resurfaced and from edge of garage floor fixed. Need 10 sq feet of sidewalk and new driveway apron done. Lots of work for spring and summer.

Want the house ready to sell in 18.

 

Then a condo. Then have to decide if moving next to the patriots is something I want to do.

 

What do you do ?

What are you plans outside?

I have an HOA where I live so Lawn maintenance is somewhat strict.

I cut and edge myself.

I have someone come in and do weed control and Fertilizer etc and answer questions of when i should overseed or plant new/spot seed .(Best decision I have made)

 

It all depends on how good you want the grass to look.

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For me it's about two things:

 

1 - how do I want to spend my spare time?

2 - do I have the disposable income to afford it?

 

I actually enjoy doing some yard work like planting things, doing a little light landscaping -- I built a fire pit a few years ago -- but mowing the lawn and mulching are boring and time-consuming tasks I'd much rather delegate.

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Mead, I feel your pain(s). We're under contract to sell our house now and we're moving to the Cape in April. We did a lot of what you mentioned a few years ago - resurfaced driveway, put in bluestone walk, widened the apron, and lots of things to the inside of the house. The last thing was having the basement waterproofed. $$$ Ugh!

 

I always mowed my lawn & leaves, and wifey and I took care of the all the very sizable gardens. It's a ton of work. We'd typically spend a half day each weekend mowing, trimming, picking up debris, etc. There were no gardens or trees on our property when we bought it nearly 25 years ago, and we overdid it.

 

The worst blunder was putting a bull bay magnolia tree close to the house. I call it the "never again" tree. It's a deciduous evergreen tree and it drops it's leaves in the summer along with the large flower petals, and then the center cones fall in the autumn and winter. It can take an hour to pick up a weeks worth of its droppings. Note to self: NEVER put one of those in a location that you have to maintain. Our neighbor did that. Of course he put his on the edge of his property and mine. :angry:

 

The house we're building has a much smaller yard. I'm going to get an electric battery operated push mower. :thumbsup:

Edited by Nanker
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The worst blunder was putting a bull bay magnolia tree close to the house. I call it the "never again" tree. It's a deciduous evergreen tree and it drops it's leaves in the summer along with the large flower petals, and then the center cones fall in the autumn and winter. It can take an hour to pick up a weeks worth of its droppings. Note to self: NEVER put one of those in a location that you have to maintain. Our neighbor did that. Of course he put his on the edge of his property and mine. :angry:

 

 

 

HAHA, my wife LOVES our magnolia. I OTOH, who does the yard work...hates it!

 

Funny to read meads post about landscaping this spring..down south have to do any new planting in the fall

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I'm in a new construction so it's an interesting time in terms of yard work. I've only ever dealt with well established landscaping up until now. We've been here about a year and a half and we're still trying to figure out exactly what we want where. The yard care itself is mostly non-existent. The trees are very young so there are almost no leaves. It's pretty much just mowing and weeding until we really figure out what we want to do. The grass is bermuda and has a very short growing season, so even the mowing doesn't happen very much over the course of a year.

 

I pay someone for fertilizer and weed treatments. Other than that, it's all me.

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For me it's about two things:

 

1 - how do I want to spend my spare time?

2 - do I have the disposable income to afford it?

 

That was it for me. I want to spend weekends with my family, not a lawnmower.

 

For $70/month I have a guy handle my property every two weeks; not just mow/blow/go, but he regularly trims hedges, shrubs, etc. as well as maintaining my sprinklers.

 

I can skip a night out every month for that.

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That was it for me. I want to spend weekends with my family, not a lawnmower.

 

For $70/month I have a guy handle my property every two weeks; not just mow/blow/go, but he regularly trims hedges, shrubs, etc. as well as maintaining my sprinklers.

 

I can skip a night out every month for that.

 

Funny, I pay the same...$35 a visit and they come every other week during the season. I just can't argue with that, given the free time it provides.

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That was it for me. I want to spend weekends with my family, not a lawnmower.

 

For $70/month I have a guy handle my property every two weeks; not just mow/blow/go, but he regularly trims hedges, shrubs, etc. as well as maintaining my sprinklers.

 

I can skip a night out every month for that.

70 x 12 or 9 ?

 

I mow 110 plus yards a month. Last thing I wanna do is mine but it gets done.

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I get a service to do it. I have gone through 3 or 4 and I'm losing patience. All these guys want to do is mow and blow. I don't mind cutting and edging my lawn but I hate picking weeds. That's really why I have them and that's what they all refuse to do after a few visits. The best shape our property has been has been when I'm doing it. I'm thinking I will just have to go back to doing it. Have to sell my crappy battery powered lawn mower and get a decent gas one. The battery deal just doesn't have enough power when you need it.

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I do it myself. It's not about saving money it's great therapy for me and good exercise. With the rain we have I have a massive amount of weeds to pull. I bought a weed wacker last year and can't wait to break that baby out this spring.

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That was it for me. I want to spend weekends with my family, not a lawnmower.

 

For $70/month I have a guy handle my property every two weeks; not just mow/blow/go, but he regularly trims hedges, shrubs, etc. as well as maintaining my sprinklers.

 

I can skip a night out every month for that.

 

$70/month? I couldn't find anyone around here to do it for less than twice that.

 

We need more illegal immigrants in DC.

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70 x 12 or 9 ?

 

I mow 110 plus yards a month. Last thing I wanna do is mine but it gets done.

 

Twelve.

 

 

$70/month? I couldn't find anyone around here to do it for less than twice that.

 

We need more illegal immigrants in DC.

 

The only thing Mexican about my gardener and his two helpers is, occasionally, their lunch. They do the two properties to my left, so he's hitting three accounts in one fell swoop. It's actually a cool little system the way they break it down.

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I've always done it myself because it was therapeutic. However, it could be a pain. When I lived in Snyder, before the October storm killed many of the trees, it would take 2 hours to rake the leaves. It was not a big lot of land.

 

Now I live with my GF in a neighborhood in Glenwood across from KB. There are so many trees that 85% of the people don't even bother with lawn care. Thank God my GF is one of them lol.

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I used to enjoy the maintenance and LOVED the design and instal. One house we rented a bobcat, scrapped the lot clean and started over putting in over 400 plants, from ground cover to live oaks. It MADE that house and we made a bundle on that one.

 

Over the years I've lost interest in the maintenance and, not coincidentally, our current HOA fee pays for water, security monitoring, gutter cleaning, etc. and......LAWN CARE. We are planning a new porch for the back yard and will re-do the plantings at that point, but in this stinkin' Georgia clay I'll hire people to do the hard parts!

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I do it myself. It's not about saving money it's great therapy for me and good exercise. With the rain we have I have a massive amount of weeds to pull. I bought a weed wacker last year and can't wait to break that baby out this spring.

Weed wacker not good for weeds though. You have to pull them no? Anyway, this time, after all the rain our backyard was getting over run as I hadn't done any weeding in a month or so. We went away for 10 days and my sister in law house/dog sit while we were gone. Lucky for me she loves yard work and when we got back they were all pulled! To bad she lives across the bay or we would have her over more regularly ;)

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