Whats your yard look like?

[picframer]

I like to think if it as a work in progress. I bought this property in 1987, it was fully of trees, just over 5 acres, front 1 1/2 acres was swampy, poor drainage, the trees are black spruce and there are/were hundreds. Fill even back then was expensive, long story short I have put 400++ loads of fill in. At one point we had a nice lawn on the septic field and around the front of the house, cinch bug hit it and it never recovered, at the time I had it sprayed. Money being what it is and a single income family I have always made sure the family had everything they needed and many things they wanted, the lawn was never a priority as it would take twenty to thirty grand to get it in shape. About two years ago my son who was in grade 12 wanted to do some yard care type work so I bought a small tractor with a back hoe and loader, commercial mower etc. He did very well and I watched with great interest as my interest in the security company I owned part of was dying as it was too big. I did start landscaping with the tractor last summer, figured the grass should be last, put a nice fire pit in, culverts in the driveway, built the driveway properly, bought 30 loads of fill and finished or expanded areas, started digging rocks and spent what I could afford on trees and a few flower gardens, three retaining walls etc. This year when I decided in January to go after the Yard Care business full time and started buying the equipment, I started on the property with great zeal in April, plan was yard care 4 days a week, my yard one day, woodworking the other two, well that worked until the third week of April as the new business really took off. So this past week I have been trying to come up with a balance, yard care has taken on a life of it's own and I find myself working 7 days a week, most days 12 hours, rain days do not matter as that is when we spray. I decided to schedule less work per week and to make up for what I haven't done on my own property, schedule one day a week for every crew member to come in and work on my yard of one day a week, should look pretty good by mid July. So that is the history, the excuse and the plan. At the moment the grass is a joke, everything is well laid out and graded properly, retaining walls are done, trees are planted so it's till what I have under, move about 150 large granite rocks that are left as I won't have to hire equipment, buy 15+ loade of top soil, sod etc. Still have about 400 trees down from a hurricane a few years back that is also part of the plan, dunno I always seem to have so much to do and so little time, factor into that being a single father of two for a few years and having two teenagers very active in sports, one in the Canada Games and now the Olympics, making money has been the priority to keep things going and save for their University which in Canada has insane costs, $16,500 per year per child. Anyhow, when I get something done worth looking at I will post. Andy

[jasonw]

Lawn care business tips

Mine I can not complain about to much. I just purchased this house in mid Nov/08 The front yard was dirt. I just put down 10lbs of seed "Way to much for the small yard" and started watering it. Now its mostly weeds with a little grass between but it gets watered and is green and for that matter greener than many of the yards in the neighborhood. I think the hardest thing to keep up on is we have a raised round bed in the lawn "about 4 blocks high" with a very nice tree and flowers and a pond. The pond is a nightmare maintaining. Our property is split in 2 sections by a 6 foot RW fence. The back is tore up. Only thing out back is the dove loft, chicken coup, dog and a lot of ATV tracks in the dead weeds. We do have one large flower bed, roses, grapes and trees out back that we care for but other than that it looks like the moon. Our dream is to one day have the entire property landscaped. This however is nothing compared to our ranch. It is located in an area that is always wet year round. We only visit the ranch about one week ever 2-3 years and when we do its a whole week of fixing coral fences, weed whacking everything and about 6 thousand trips to the burn pile with the tractor pulling a tailor full of pine needles.