Category: Mowing The Lawn

Life Can Throw Curve Balls At Times

By bringing the phrase curve balls into the conversation, I am not referring to baseball and having fun playing ball with the team or friends. The matter of grass being blown onto the street can have an effect passersby such as bicycles, pedestrians and especially motorcyclists.

Dangers of Grass Clippings on the Road or Pathway

Far too many hack down their lawn and do not care about it impacting anyone else. They could care less about their lawn and when they finally knock down the grass after it has been growing for six weeks without being cut, they just spray the clippings onto the road. Whether this is deliberately done or due to a serious lack of awareness, it poses a big danger and it must be handled properly. Any one that is walking, jogging, riding a bike or motorcycle through an area where there is grass on pavement is at risk for falling or crashing.

The danger lies within the grass being wet. During the overnight, the moisture content of the air increases, and it abides to the grass. When this happens, a layer of dew forms and the blades of grass are wet. Depending on how tall the grass is, this moisture may not evaporate from the blades of grass all day, even during direct sunlight, especially if it is humid or the grass is incredibly tall. cutting the lawn to avoid clippings in the road

What happens when the grass is cut at a high rate of speed from a lawn mower blade, is that the moisture then gets dispersed all over the clippings. Wet clippings on pavement add an element of material between the road surface and the runner or motorcyclist. Road surface is normally grippy for tires on a bike or motorcycle, or the shoes on a runner moving at a high rate of speed, but wet grass prevents those shoes or tires from gripping to the surface. Enough volume of wet grass can cause the pavement area to be as slippery as an ice rink. Talk about danger.

Prevention Is Key

Opinions on this matter scatter across the board. Motorcyclists whose lives could be in danger are generally angry about this, whereas homeowners who want to hack down their yard three times per growing season and “call it good”, do not care about anyone but themselves it appears.

A lawn care service in Stillwater, MN mentioned the technique that is employed by their crews to mow every lawn with one or two passes around the perimeter of the property on their mowers with the discharge chute pointing in towards the lawn. This is not only much safer for the roads and sidewalks, but also reduces the potential for damage to occur to cars driving by the property or pedestrians walking by because the mower deck chutes never point towards them during that time. It also saves them time on every property because their crews do not need to spend time blowing clippings off the street or sidewalk.

They explained their process in-depth in this video:

Another tip that a homeowner could employ, if they have the right mower for the job, is if clippings are blown into the street and they are too lazy to grab a blower to blow it back into the turf, they can drive their mower in reverse with the chute pointing towards the lawn. With blades spinning wide open, unless the turf is completely wet, nearly all of it will blow back into the yard. Saving time and making for a safer environment. An ounce of prevention goes a long way.

That Lawn Care and Whiskey Life

When it comes to your home or business, the landscaping is extremely important because not only does it increase the value of the property, it’s the first thing your guests see besides the color of your home or business.  Keep these in mind when hiring a professional lawn man or landscape builder:

  • Make sure they install strong edging that can withstand being walked on or possibly hit with a lawn mower
  • Install a drip irrigation system in all landscape beds – this will save time and money by allowing your plants, perennials, and flowers to be watered automatically
  • Install mulch every year – mulch retains moisture for plants and enhances the look of your home’s landscaping
  • Make sure your lawn drains properly – use extra soil to raise the level of the lawn near structures so water will wash away from it
  • Consider how much sunlight your lawn receives each day – this will greatly affect the type of shrubs, trees, and perennials that can be installed

Backyard Landscaping Makes For Great Parties

Instead of leaving town on the weekends, many stay home and want to enjoy their elegant landscaping at their home in their backyard.  If this is you, then you need to hire a professional lawn care provider and landscaper.  Projects as small as simple planting beds with shrubs, edging, and mulch can be done.  All the way up to vast projects such as paver patios with a freestanding wall to sit on around an outdoor fire place with a waterfall as a backdrop.  The possibilities are truly endless.  Imagine not having to hurry up to get home from work on Friday to head out of town to enjoy peace and serenity because it’s now in your backyard.  You will be the envy of the neighborhood and all the neighbors will want to spend weekends at your home grilling and enjoying a bonfire.  Many of these projects can be maintenance free since they are hard-scapes and require minimum upkeep.

Finding The Best Company To Handle The Lawn Work Can Be Tough

Finding the best landscaper and lawn service can be a daunting task. Every large city has hundreds if not thousands of contractors that offer everything from design and construction of entire projects such as paver patios, outdoor kitchens, and retaining walls for homes and businesses alike. Their prices will also vary as well, the approximate costs are anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000 or more. Lawn mowing prices are also across the board as well. It is best to seek out resources to qualify your chosen company before making the decision to write that check for their services. 

Bringing About New Life In The New Year

As it is officially a couple weeks into the new year, we couldn’t be happier because when it is bitter cold in the middle of January, that means prime weekends away from home with plenty of alcohol and whiskey are afloat. And speaking of afloat, we can’t wait to be floating on a boat, on a lake, when it’s 90 degrees and hot out, babes in bikinis and the last care in the world is cutting my lawn.a lawn man working

But seriously, let’s think about this for a second. If you’re a person who has their head on straight.

Hiring For Lawn Care

How on Earth does it make any sense to spend an entire weekend spraying weeds, installing mulch, or heck – even when it’s January – I would rather watch playoff football with a whiskey coke in my hand, then be slaving away shoveling trying to remove the snow from my driveway! Then come Super Bowl time, that’s when the party really gets going.

But anyway, once summer time hits and those ice cold beers come out, there is nothing better than packing up for the weekend and forgetting about the sixty hour workweek than to get out to the lake and drink until we forget what we came there to forget. And that is saying something. When I figured out how to hire a lawn care company and landscaper, it was instantly the saying of “Here, take my money!” I’m out of here was my next thought.

Getting More Free Time on Weekends

Those guys get the work done during the while I am slaving for the bossman (but hey, I am able to afford to live and have whiskey on the weekends so who is complaining?), and come weekend time, there is no outdoor work that needs to be done on my property. So I can spend the next 48ish hours getting totally wasted and forgetting everything. I love it.

If you have the financial wherewithal and capability to be able to hire a contractor for the hard work around your house, please, for the sake of your sanity – do it!

 

Keeping The Outdoors Beautiful In All Areas of The Country

When it comes to keeping a high quality of life in the home, few things are as important as the outdoor area. The overall curb appeal is massively effected by the way a house looks. And when a house looks good, its inhabitants are even more happy, without the need of false happiness creators such as alcohol like whiskey.  Which can be quite detrimental to a human’s life and overall morale within the home.

Caring For The Lawn When It Matters Most

All things aside from binge drinking and/or enjoying alcohol. Having a nicely kept home is very important for making the neighbors look jealous. And there is not a better way to ensure an amazing looking home like having a nice lush green lawn. An example of a great looking lawn is shown below.

perfectly mowed lawn

You can see the deepness of the green turf, showing the immense amount of nitrogen that’s used for fertilizing to keep grass in that green state all season long. If you’re able to achieve this same look on your own property, then you have it made! Seriously, every single neighbor will be jealous as can be that your lawn looks that good. It’s not out of line to say the grass looks better than a major league baseball stadium’s outfield!

Even better, if you were to hire a professional groundskeeping service, you won’t have to do any of the hard work to have your home achieve this look. Talk about a win, win situation for all involved. You are able to laugh at your neighbors and enjoy some whiskey or whatever your alcoholic beverage of choice is, while they are out slaving away cutting the lawn, spreading fertilizer, and trimming shrubs. And then, a great local business is receiving the benefit of another client, also known as more revenue and more exposure for their business.

Make Fun, Then Ask How You Did It

The old adage of doing something different, getting a bunch of flack for peers, and then after results arrive, they ask “how did you do it?”. It reigns true in many aspects of life and outdoor lawn and landscape maintenance is no stranger to it in most neighborhoods throughout the USA. If you decide to go against the grain of the typical working man who takes too much pride in his “hard work” of mowing and fertilizing his own place each week and decide to hire a lawn care company like Fresh Cut Turf Pros or whomever is local to your area.

You’ll be the butt of every joke when you go out for beers and whiskey at the local watering establishment. That is until, these types of companies do the work and you keep the lawn watered, then one day coming home from work your not-so-nice neighbors’ jaws drop at the depth of green in your lawn.

Meanwhile, you’ll be inside relaxing with a cold one and while the neighbor fires up his mower to get the old weekend routine started with beers and mowing. Life is just grand isn’t it?

The Best Weekend Ever – Beer, Whiskey and Country Music When Mowing The Lawn

There comes a time during every year when the weather gets hot, humid and the sun’s shining and there’s nothing better than after spending a bunch of time cutting grass in the hot summer’s sun than enjoying some ice cold whiskey and beer.  I’ve spent my fair share of days having to work outside in the sun over the years. Some days were good, other days, well not so much.

How To Enjoy Summer Weekends With Drinks and Friends

But, the caveat to all that is the concerts that come around, especially country. Nobody enjoys an ice cold whiskey and coke alongside a beer than a bunch of screaming country music fans. A great example would be to look at a concert we attended a few years back by Luke Bryan and a few other big name artists in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

People were dancing, singing and overall just getting drunk and going crazy for the music. Talk about a grand ol’ time. The video I shared unfortunately wasn’t one of mine, I only wish I could’ve been that close and on stage to enjoy those sweet melodies.

However, I reach an epiphany at that stage, I realized how I needed to enjoy my time more every day. And this meant cutting out anything that caused me to not enjoy every single second of freedom and free time I had outside of my 8am to 5pm job Monday through Friday. So in turn, I had to find a house cleaner (Beauticians Inc.), because that takes hours to do each week. Next was a home chef (Your Kitchen Automated, LLC).

Getting Down To It For Getting My Weekend Drinking Time Back

I saved over a dozen hours per week by doing that. And then I had to find a snow plowing service for the winter time (who knows how many back breaking hours that endures), and eventually when the following spring came around, I found the lawn care service. And I was wowed by the work those guys (Always Greener Landscaping) did each week, because best of all I never had to get dirty again with the mowing, grass blowing all over, weed trimming, and laying the mulch wood chips. What a mood improvement to not have to come home to doing that stuff on weeknights and big projects on the weekend because I had hired it out. If you own property in the Lehigh Valley, I can’t recommend them enough, check their website for information about Always Greener’s lawn care and landscaping services. I cant describe the feeling any more than “sigh of relief!” once the burden of having to work on my house on the weekends is now lifted off me!

My time is so much more valuable, even compared to the $50-$75+

ice cold beer, country music

per hour that the lawn care company ends up charging for their lawn mowing, rock bed, and leaf removal work. And my chef is about $100 per hour, but it’s an investment rather than a cost because that’s more time spent with friends, good music, cold alcoholic drinks (unless it’s winter time and we’re talking about some alcohol infused eggnog), and good times. It just simply can’t be beat.