Tag Archives: yard

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The first taste of spring. I’ve paid my dues and part of my reward has been “graduating” to a cube next to the windows. Usually that’s a good thing. Except this time of year when the weather finally starts shaking off the winter doldrums, things start greening up, and our courtyard looking more like an ill-tended park than a well-tended prison yard. It’s good to have a view of something, but once the rain stopped this week and the sun came out the view has mostly left me with a feeling that I’d much rather be outside working in the yard (or holding down a stool on one of my favorite deck bars) than sitting here working on version 43 of The PowerPoint Presentation that Will Save the World.

2. Being common. Pretty much everyone I know professionally carries around something called a Common Access Card. The theory behind the CAC is that it would be the one ID card to rule them all. It’s a good idea. Except that it’s not. Although it is ubiquitously common, it provides access to basically nothing. One way you know this is by standing behind a woman at the front door card scanner and watching for almost a minute while she tries to use it to unlock the doors. Even offering up a helpful, “Uh, I think you need to use you other access card for that door” was met with a furious gaze and a firm “No. You have to use your CAC.” Yeah. Fine lady. Don’t mind me while I reach past you to swipe my card so I can actually get to my desk.

3. The yard. One of the reasons I liked the new house so much was that the yard took up a relatively minor space on an otherwise spacious lot. The rest is filled in with reasonably large trees and plenty of undergrowth. The house needs a few odds and ends, but I made my peace with living with it for a while to decide what and how to attack those. The yard on the other hand is probably only a few days – a week at most – from demanding immediate attention. Trimming shrubs, weeding front and back, new mulch, dirt patches to seed where gas and septic have been dug up, areas where grading pushes water towards the house instead of away from it, the eventual fence project, and the general mowing and edging. Assuming the yard stays dry some of those things are going to have to start this weekend with others following on shortly thereafter. I haven’t had the amount of time to plan the attack that I’d have liked. By the end of summer I’ll have it sorted out, but don’t expect progress to be coherent or consistent in any way. Sadly that means it’s going to take more time than expected to bring the outside up to my probably unreasonable standard of “finished.”

Mexican standoff…

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I might not be quite fanatical about lawn care, but it’s a pretty close run thing. In fact, “not fanatical” might just be a matter of degree, but compared to one of my two neighbors, I’m downright lax with my mowing and trimming routine. Normally that’s not much of a problem because the other neighbor lives somewhere on the other end of the mowing spectrum. Over there, they live by the once-a-month-is-good-enough standard. Sure, it’s bothersome, but I’m slowly learning to live with the things I can’t control. That’s not really the point, though.

The point, unfortunately, is that mine is now the neighborhood yard most in need of a good going over. While I’d very much like to take care of that problem, my John Deere is currently rated as out of service and unable to perform its primary mission. Loosely translated, after replacing the fuel filter, spark plug, and checking the fuel lines, I can’t keep the damned thing running for more than 45 seconds and even then it’s working at about 10% power. That means the yard is coming up on two weeks un-mowed and it’s starting to make me twitchy. The fact that it’s rained off and on every other hour for the last three days isn’t helping matters at all.

The fine people from the local Deere dealer are coming out on Friday to give it a diagnosis and attempt a repair on site. If that doesn’t go as planned, they’ll haul it away and bring it back up to operating standard at the shop. Of course if that happens, there’s no way of knowing when I’ll get my green machine back in service. That puts me in an awkward position of either a) accepting that the grass is going to be a foot tall or worse before I can do anything about it or b) ask the neighbor who actually takes meticulous care of his yard if I can borrow his tractor for an afternoon.

They’re both equally unappealing options. The former because it is an open admission of defeat and the latter because I’m completely uncomfortable borrowing a piece of equipment from the guy whose garage and workshop are cleaner than the kitchens in most commercial restaurants. It seems I’m in a Mexican standoff with myself. If things aren’t up and running on Friday, there’s not much chance of it ending well.

Fooling myself…

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After a day of working in the yard, doing laundry, running errands, and making a passing effort at starting dinner, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we’ve entered that time of year where some activities are going to have to get thrown over the side. I’ve talked before about some of the unique challenges of being a one man show, but the simple fact is if there isn’t enough time to get to everything, the stuff I don’t particularly like doing is going to be put off indefinitely – I’m looking at you here vacuuming, mopping, and dusting. Frankly, I never much liked you anyway and since you’re in head-to-head competition with working in the yard, you never really stood a chance.

It’s one of those times I wish I wasn’t quite so OCD about things being “just so,” but I’ve pretty much given up on ever letting things slide with being good enough. So what’s really going to happen for the next five months is a cycle of ignoring the interior dust and dirt until I get twitchy, launching an all-day cleaning binge about once a month, and repeating as necessary until the grass stops growing in the fall. Sure, I could hire it out… but then I have to deal with the awkwardness of having strange people wandering around in the house. I’m sure you can guess how anxious I am for that to happen. So in the spirit of spring, here I sit trying my best to ignore every rug that needs vacuumed, every stray bit of dust and dog hair, and don’t even get me started on the wood floors that need mopped.

OK, so I could have probably spot cleaned the kitchen in the time it took me to tap this out, but let’s face it, writing isn’t one of those things that I’m very likely to give up in favor of cleaning now is it?

They might not be so bad…

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So the neighbor’s kids still annoy the living bejesus out of Maggie and Winston, but they are slowly starting to show a few potentially redeeming qualities too… Like when they were playing in their driveway yesterday and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Neighbor Girl 1: Your grass looks nice.

Jeff: Uhhh… Thank you.

Neighbor Girl 2: Mommy says daddy should take care of the yard like you do, Mr. Jeff.

Jeff: Hahahahahahahahaha!

Neighbor: Girl 2, did you just say what I think you said?

Jeff: Bwahahahahahahahaha! *and walks away*

I’m beginning to think that these kids might not be so bad after all.

Sometimes…

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The worst part about blogging, aside from the unforgiving bouts of writers block, is the inevitable moments when there are a lot of things banging around between the ears, but not one that’s quite ready to be rereleased out into the blogosphere on it’s own. Nothing earth shattering – no news on the hiring freeze, no real leads yet outside DoD, but the faintest flicker of hope that after there’s an actual budget things might start moving again – though there will be no breath holding on that coming true.

Outside of that, it’s spring in West Tennessee. I’m ignoring house cleaning in favor of yard work, and that’s generally a good thing except for the coating of dust, dog hair, and pollen that seems to be collecting on everything inside. Maybe I’ll get around to dealing with that at some point. Or better yet, maybe I’ll get around to hiring a cleaning to come in and give the place a once over from time to time.

Not much of a post, right? Stream of consciousness is fun. Maybe next time I’ll be back to ranting and raving

Fencing…

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I’m probably a lot more excited about this than I should be, but I finally found a landscape contractor and have him under contract to put in my fence. Assuming the weather holds, there should be a crew here tomorrow setting the posts. No more view of the neighbor’s ratty-assed, weed ridden back yard… Now that’s worth twice the estimate.

The waiting was the hardest part…

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It’s said that patience is a virtue. It’s never been one of my particular favorites, but sometimes it pays off. I got home from work this afternoon to find that one of my neighbors has finally started putting up a privacy fence… meaning that I can put in the two end sections (saving beaucoup dollars over having to install the whole thing myself) and be relieved of the annoyance that is the back yard of my neighbor to the west. My new favorite neighbor’s contractor is supposed to drop off an estimate for me tomorrow. Next time I see her walking the dog in the morning, I’m gonna kiss that woman… Tongue, no tongue, totally her choice.

On my side of the fence…

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It’s taken thrice weekly watering, half a dozen applications of fertilizer since early March, weekly trimmings from the lawn service, and going nearly bankrupt to pay for water bills, but my lawn is finally greener than the neighbors. That’s not to say it’s green, however. The 13 inch rain deficit in Memphis has helped assure that it probably won’t reach that milestone any time soon. But it is a better shade of dark yellow than the next guy, so I’m formally declaring victory.