At the beginning of September, we moved into our very first house. We were tired of paying rent, especially when our rent was more than mortgages that friends and family have. After going through the roller coaster of looking at houses, we found our home.
My parents were able to come down for a week and help us move from apartment to house. While they were here, we talked about different landscaping ideas for the home and things that we could do to the yard. My dad loves working in the yard. Every house that I lived in with them, he had a great yard and landscaping.
After we moved into our home, my dad would get up before anyone and go into my front yard and pull weeds. One morning my dad was telling me about different things I would need to do to my yard. He told me how often I should probably water, showed me different types of weeds, and other yard things. He took me to find a good landscaping company near us to talk about fertilizer and pre-emergent, when I should do those during the year, and when the best time to reseed was. You see, our home is a new build. When they were building our house, they laid the sod for our front yard at the worst time, the end of June. We live in the southeastern part of the United States, and June and July are the worst times to do that because of all the heat, especially since there are no trees in the yards to give it any shade.
The landscaping business told me that the best time to fertilize and reseed the front yard would be sometime in September or October. If I wanted any longer, it would be a waste of money. They went on to tell me the best type of fertilizer and seed to use, based on the area.
I'm not going to talk about what I have done to the yard; that isn't the point.
One day I was outside pulling weeds, and one of my neighbors came out, and we started to talk. We talked about what we were each doing for our lawns and we talked about a guy up the street whose front yard is nice and green and full looking. I remember saying how I wished my front yard looked like his. When I look from his yard to mine, all I saw were the areas I wanted to fix.
I decided to introduce myself to the neighbor that had the good looking yard and asked him what he was doing to his yard to see what I could learn and maybe do to my yard. During our conversation, I realized that I was doing everything that he was. The only difference between the two yards was when his sod was installed. My sod was laid in June, and his was near the end of August, which is just about the perfect time.
He did say one thing during our conversation that stuck with me. He said, "Your yard is looking good. I can see a change over the past couple of weeks." I looked at my yard from this new angle, and he was right. My yard was green and looked healthier than my neighbors. You could tell that I put some time into improving our yard, and the work was starting to show.
We have all heard the saying: the grass is always greener on the other side. I have heard it, and I have said it, but it never really hit home for me until recently.
It is easy to see the flaws when you are close to something, especially when looking at yourself. It is easy to beat yourself up when you look in the mirror. I know I have. I know that I can have a bad temper, sometimes I feel useless since I don't provide monetarily to our family, I have white in my beard, I am overweight, and I can worry when I don't need to.
If I relax for a moment and look at everything I have instead of focusing on the negative, I see that I am blessed with a great life. I am married to an amazing woman. I am lucky enough to be able to stay at home and raise our son. We have a beautiful first home, and we are in a great area. We never go hungry (my stomach shows that) and always have what we need. We have running water and central heating and air. Our families are there for us if we ever need them. We are truly blessed.
I know life can be stressful and hectic. Take a step back sometime. Take a second and relax and look at your life from a different angle. Maybe you will find out that your life, aka yard, is more beautiful than you thought.
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