We spent the morning doing basic yard work, which we had neglected more or less ever since Hurricane Irma. Areca palm fronds were hanging over the sidewalk, and where they weren’t, grass in the sidewalk cracks was ankle-high. I hadn’t mowed the lawn since the week *before* Irma, so it looked pretty ragged. And the walk leading to the house from the sidewalk also had weeds everywhere. The house was starting to look like it was abandoned.
So we clipped and trimmed and mowed and I used a shovel to get the weeds out of the cracks because we never, ever use herbicides. And then I swept the walks, and we loaded all the brush into the bed of the truck and took it up to the brush recycling site. Then we went to a nursery and picked up more flowers and milkweed for the front flowerbed, which got totally destroyed by Irma, and Carolyn spent time this afternoon putting in a new flower bed.
We used to have a guy who would come out on Saturday mornings and help with the upkeep of the yard. Sadly, he’s no longer available. That’s another reason things got so out of hand. But the main reason was that it was so damned hot for so damned long this year. It was hard enough just to walk to the car in the mornings. No chance I was going to get outside and work if I didn’t have to. Time to hire a regular lawn service, I think. If not during the winter, then by spring at the latest.
Sam Falco 