Tag: yard

I pride myself in having the discernment of knowing when to not take shortcuts, those times when doing so would likely end up costing more work or taking more time. Conversely, I also know which shortcuts are actually worthwhile.

This applies to travel, repairing things, performing work, and so forth. Although I don’t believe in luck, some people seem to have better fortune than others.

If you’ve seen—and happen to remember—the movie “Just My Luck” you were treated to both extremes of this situation: one person who expected everything to always work out—and it did—and the other who expected that everything would go wrong—and it did.

I remember when I did an uncharacteristically “low percentage” move, one born out of laziness or haste or a combination thereof, it was a decision with a high likelihood of disaster.

I was hand mowing around my house with the push mower; I neglected to first pick up the hoses. Upon seeing the first hose, not wanting to stop the mower, I tipped the deck up, slowly and carefully pushing it over the hose. 

Everything went as I hoped. At the back of the house, the process was repeated for the second hose. This time, it was done a little less carefully and a little quicker—the results were not pleasant, with bits of rubber flying in all directions. Now I had to stop the mower.

So, for not wanting to take a few seconds to stop the mower and move the hose, I ended up spending about a half an hour, going to the hardware store, buying a replacement fitting, and wrestling it into place. Now my hose is a few feet shorter as a result.

Haste does indeed make waste. I hope I learned my lesson.

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Last week I shared my quandary about my lawn (“The Pursuit of the Perfect Lawn”). Although my goal is to find a balance between my lawn’s appearance and the corresponding work required, I yet discover precisely how to achieve that. Part of the issue is watering.

The “use” of water is not a concern. Irrigating a lawn does not actually consume water (see “Save Water”). It merely takes water from the earth and redistributes it—mostly back to the ground, with a bit evaporating to join rain-producing clouds.

There is some electricity required to extricate the water from the earth, but that’s not a huge concern either.

My disquiet is the act of watering itself. For most people this is not an issue. Just program the irrigation system and forget it. Not so with me. I rely on the old-fashion method of dragging hoses around and carefully pointing sprinklers in order that my lawn may receive its requisite hydration.

Sometimes this is a major hassle and I wonder why I do it. However, by hand moving sprinklers I can direct water to where it is most needed: extra attention to the dry spots and a quicker pass on the shaded areas.

You can’t do that with an in-ground system. Part of the lawn will always be over watered, while a few areas will inevitably be stressed.

However, I generally enjoy this task of watering. It gives me a short break from work, allows me to go outside, and provides satisfaction.  I often find that when I am in “watering mode” I work more effectively because work occurs with greater intentionally between trips to the yard.

The process is quite simple. I program a reminder using the calendar function in Outlook. When it alerts, I tell it to “snooze” for an hour and head outside to reposition the sprinklers.

Well, it just chimed, telling me it’s “time to move the sprinklers.” Gotta go, bye!

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Over the years my attitude towards lawns has changed.

I must have spent too many hours mowing lawn as a teen because when we bought our first house I was ambivalent about the condition and appearance of our grass. As long as it was mowed, I was fine.

It could be weedy and brown, but as long as no anomalous growth showed from the road it was all good.

After a while, my attitude changed, perhaps because brown grass isn’t much fun to view or walk on. So my goal then became to have a yard that was mowed and green. I didn’t care if it was full of weeds, as long as they were green weeds.

This required watering during dry spells, but that was okay if the result was a nice shade of green.

That phase also ran it course as I became dissatisfied with neatly mowed green weeds. I then sought to be weed-free as well. This required fertilizer and weed killer—five times a year. But then to get the most out the product I was applying, more water was required.

Overall, I am pleased with the results—and it looks great from the road, as evidenced by the many positive comments I receive. Alas, with fertilizer and more watering, comes more frequent mowing.

As it is turning out, the pursuit of a well-trimmed, green-colored, weed-free lawn is taking more time than I want to give it.

It seems that I know how to have a lousy looking lawn, and I’ve figured out what it takes to have a great looking lawn, but I’m thinking that the perfect lawn is partway in between—it looks okay, but doesn’t take much time. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that.

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

A few weeks ago, while admiring the red leaves on my burning bush and the yellow leaves on my Maple trees, I noted that dealing with the falling leaves would soon occur.

Fortunately, this is a task that I hire out—it is the only yard work I don’t do myself.

Ten healthy, growing Maple trees simply produce too many leaves for me to deal with. So, I called my favorite leaf service and in a couple hours, a team of three had the leaves corralled into the pile pictured below.

Although it looks like they might be ready for curbside leaf pickup, we don’t enjoy such a service where we live. In fact, we don’t even have a curb. But part of the leaf service includes pickup by a separate company.

As of today, the pile is gone—and with it, my leaf responsibilities for another year.

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices. Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.