Landscapes

Chris and I argue about a handful of things, mostly the usual type of things, like dishes, laundry, etc. I usually chalk this up to the fact that we are both completely exhausted and there are just plain not enough hours in the day to get everything done, especially with a very rambunctious 2 year old. Chris is an awesome father and husband and he does a lot of things really well, including the raising of our children. However, there is one thing that absolutely drives me insane that has been known to result in "I'm not speaking to you for a week" fights. It is the lawn and the care of it. Don't get me wrong, I have yet to cut the grass so I can't complain about that. But, Chris and I have different viewpoints on what a yard should look like. My dad has always been a bit of a neat freak about his yard and always has perfectly cut grass and trimmed weeds and bright flowers. We have, at best, a hodge podge of plants and flowers and mostly just an overgrown mess. I would like something in between. For example, Chris typically does not cut the grass until it is pretty overgrown (not really his fault- he can only do this when I am home because of the aforementioned 2 year old) and then it takes him a couple of hours to cut it. Because of the length of time it takes to cut it, he doesn't want to bag it as well so all of the long grass clippings just sit there and turn into piles of unattractive hay in the yard.

Something like this..........

We have dead patches of grass and creeping charlie that is threatening to replace all of our grass...

We have toys everywhere you look and our pile of "wood that needs to be burned" just grows every year, along with the weeds that are coming up through the deck...

Ok, before you think I've gone off on a rant about my husband and his poor landscaping abilities, this story really does have a different point to it. We have argued about the yard since the day we moved in. And then, today, I had a realization. We were watching some old home movies of my mom, my aunts and my grandparents (dated 1963). There was a lot of footage of the outdoors, including their yard and a few of their neighbors yards. One thing that I noticed is that nobody had any "nice" landscaping. The grass grew in patches and the flowers were what grew wildly. But the funny thing was- it was ok. They were happy. And I bet that nobody even cared about how perfect the lawn could look. It made me wonder when our society changed and made us believe that you need to have a perfectly mowed, watered, pristine lawn to fit in? Because the truth is- we don't get much time as a family these days and if by not bagging the grass and not whipping the weeds, we can stretch this out a bit more- it is what we will do. It is what matters right now- not the grass, or the broken gate or the flowers. I'm sorry Chris for not being able to see the point you were trying to make all along. Life is short and before we know it, our grandkids will be watching videos of us and it won't matter if the grass got cut once a week or twice a month. So, if you come to visit our house this summer, you may have to walk through some tall grass or kick around a few grass clippings or broken toys- but just know that we are happy and that someday when our kids are bigger and don't want to spend time with us- we'll remedy the landscaping. But for now, while they still like to do stuff with us- we'll be doing that instead!