This thread has me, a Briton, feeling very strongly that – as Churchill put it – we are two nations divided by a common language: so much different vocabulary, starting with – from our point of view – it’s a garden, not a yard ! (This not meant in anger or irritation – just marvelling at all the differences.)
Re the central question: my vote was in the “can’t stand” slot. Fond though I am of nature, any kind of gardening activity bores me to tears. Fortunately from my point of view, the house where I dwell – with smallish front and back gardens, with lawns – is shared by me and my brother; who enjoys all gardening stuff, including mowing. Thus, by our mutual treaty re occupying the place, he’s the one who does all that.
One of the great days of my life was when Mrs. R said, “Why don’t we have a riding mower yet?” Needless to say, we had one shortly afterward, and ever since then I’ve enjoyed mowing the lawn. It turned two hours of tedium into twenty minutes of fun; I really enjoy blatting around on my 22 HP Husqvarna.
With this, as with so much else, my feeling is “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” It’s not the task per se, it’s the context, and that can vary
My current house has a small yard, it takes me about fifteen minutes to mow it all. I can take it or leave it.
I used to live on two acres, and I had a riding lawnmower. It would take me about two hours a week to mow, and I loved it. It was my “me” time. I got to listen to my music and think.
I don’t like mowing and am looking forward to moving to a place with a much smaller lawn. It takes from 90-120 minutes to mow currently with a large lawn tractor. But I do like the lawn to look neat and I’m more or less nursing said tractor at this point so I go out and mow weekly.
Hate it. I hate it so much I paid someone $3000 to rip all of my turf out and replace it with mulch. At the beginning of summer I just get 3 cubic yards of mulch dumped on top and I spend a Saturday spreading it out.
Damn. How big is your yard and what does this look like? That’s a really appealing idea but I need to sell my property within a year or two and I don’t know if the appearance would fly in my suburban neighborhood.
Must be a pretty small yard. Each year I buy 3 yards of mulch (my trailer holds one yard and I make three trips). That 3 yards of mulch is for beautification of planting beds.
I’ve tried hiring mowers a few times over the years, and the results have never been satisfactory. Our yard has a number of minor undulations, and everyone who’s done the mowing for me has cut the grass practically to the ground at some of those spots. (On at least one occasion, the ground itself was mowed.)
I’ve always dealt with that by keeping our mower set at one of the top couple of settings, which solves the problem without my having to pay attention to it. I’ve given that advice to people I’ve hired, and it never seems to do any good. One of them used a riding mower, and he said he had it at its highest setting. Didn’t do any good. But if I could have found someone who could mow my lawn without butchering it, I’d have given up lawn mowing years ago.
No, it’s not big. If I were doing it fresh it would be double that amount, but there’s a 1/2" still there after winter. The fresh 3 yards is just topping it off, burying whatever’s popped up in the spring.
Usually the “yard” is the land on the plot outside of the home’s structure. In most cases, there’s a front yard and a back yard.
Within the yard, you may have flower beds, vegetable gardens, etc… Generally speaking, if someone in the US is discussing their “garden”, they’re referring to the vegetable garden. The large expanse of grass in front or back is “the yard”.
The use of “garden” to describe the back yard is one of those things that perplexed me in the UK- what do you call the plot where you grow vegetables, if not the garden? And the grassy part- what is that called?
Modern electric mowers/battery operated a terrific as long as your yard isn’t huge.
Poisons reminds me of my late neighbor; he hated yard work to the point of defoliating his lawn. He asked me before doing it and I told him that as long as the bushes along our property line weren’t affected he could do as he pleased. So he hit his grass with some super-Agent-Orange (non-commercial government use only) stuff that left bare dirt an inch of the hedges and across to the other side. Nothing, not even a weed, grew there for more than 5 years. The house was just sold and I haven’t met the new neighbors yet but I wonder if I’ll let them know their yard is basically a super-fund site.
According to Yuval Noah Harari it was the bloody French nobility and their envious English copy-cats to show off how rich they were by planting an absolutely useless crop that has to be tended by an army of servants. May they be damned forever.
I really enjoy mowing my lawn, as well as the other outdoor landscaping work like weeding, tending to flowers, planting new trees/shrubs/flowers, edging, etc. I mow my lawn weekly with the occasional 10 days between due to weather or work travel. For me it is two fold and I’ll limit this back to just lawn mowing;
1.) It is my time away from work, spouse, the kids, and everything else. I find myself regularly day dreaming or mentally thinking through things that have been on my mind. I call it my Zen Time to either just stop thinking about all the responsibilities and zone out, or to noodle over unimportant things while I work.
2.) I also take an enormous amount of pride in my home and maintaining the exterior appearance including the lawn. When I finish mowing I enjoy looking at the freshly mowed lawn and it makes me happy to see it looking so good. I also feel some level of obligation to my immediate neighbors and neighborhood to maintain my home in an attractive manner. So I also get some small sense of pride knowing that people walking or driving by my home see something beautiful and well maintained and not needing attention or showing neglect. I grin ear to ear when someone stops me and compliments my home and landscaping (including lawn).
I can understand someone who does not like mowing. I cannot understand someone who as a result just refuses to do it or allows their lawn to go to crap as a result. That mentality is probably just as foreign to me as my enjoyment of lawn mowing is to the OP.
