Just Our Luck

There are lots of things we didn't think about when we decided to move from an apartment to a house. Like...we are going to need to build buying our own fridge, washer, and drier into the cost of first months rent. Also, a lawn mower. It just never crossed our minds. The good news is that for the first half of the year our yard has required very little maintenance.  Upon moving into the house the backyard was pretty much all dirt and the front yard was a mixture of mud, weeds, and grass (good ol' rentals that accept dogs...). Some guy would come to our house every week or so and offer $10 to mow and we would happily agree. The process has worked well for most of the year.

This month our front yard went on a growth spurt, and things were looking a bit atrocious. We kept waiting for the random lawn mower guy to come around but he never did. I started becoming self conscious that we were becoming "those neighbors" who never mow, so this weekend Dan and I took matters into our own non green thumb hands.

We raked, we pruned, we weeded, we paid people to mow and trim (ha!). I have never pruned bushes before, but found the task oddly satisfying.  I resisted cutting them into little dancing animal shapes.  We also have a tree that likes to puke leaves year round that wreaks havoc on every bit of our yard. Since moving here we have literally gone through more bags of leaves then I care to admit. This was what we got this time around:

By hour four we were really proud of our front yard.  It looked fabulous.  Best on the block.

Then we headed off to get the oil changed in my car. Upon our return drive home, we reflected on how nice it was going to be to pull up to a nice yard.  Then we turned the corner to our street and saw this:

A stupid tree branch fell and spurted leaves all over our perfectly manicured lawn.

Our neighbor walked by and shouted "you missed a branch!"

Sigh.