A few weeks ago I posted about living in a 3rd world country where the sun is plenty and the rains are daily. It's been two months from that, in the meantime I've had to mow the lawn about six times.
This is a net positive because I get charged 15 bucks each time the gardener comes, but I bought a simple lawn mower for 75 bucks. The machine has already paid itself and all I've done is spend a couple of hours every week doing some yard work, getting some exercise and some sun in the process and have been able to relax while doing so. A net positive.
I let my in-law borrow the lawn mower and he didn't bring it back for two weeks, then I had a lot going on that week and I let the garden go wild.
I'm living in a jungle, man.
There are some positive aspects to this, that even if I hate them on myself, the dogs love it, it's like they can go on a wild hike every morning and experience the depths of the central american jungle right there in their front yard.
Pancho loves the cushy grass and he enjoys feeling protected on his outpost where he can't be seen by wild animals and he can stalk them with no issue.
Kiri on the other hand doesn't like getting in the grass so much, perhaps it is because she's so smol that she feels overwhelmed and insecure. Either way, you can begin to imagine who's the one who craps on the concrete floor instead of the grass.
But I think the happiest of them all is Noia, who loves exploring and spending time outside, smelling things, catching bugs, taking sunbaths and just being happy. She's the only one that spends time on the garden by herself, the other three never go out - except to crap or pee - when we are not around.
But I mean if you were a dog and you had a garden like this one, wouldn't you love to go out and spend time outside?
Now before you say anything, I know I suck and I should take care of my garden during the rainy days.
But that's exactly what this post is about, let me show you how the garden was before I got my hands down to business.
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Yeah, I just doxxed my garden. I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with that but I imagine that everyone in this community has doxxed their yard and pots and stuff.
Today was a harsh day, I spent 5 hours doing the garden, I'm sunburnt, tired and I have a family meeting in a few hours that I don't really want to attend but I confirmed with weeks in advance and now I can't cancel, as much as I would love to.
Doing the lawn is no rocket science, but I would love some intel from the homesteaders and gardeners here because damn, it takes a long time and gets tiresome and I believe there are some tricks I am not using.
The process
I began by sections, doing it at a mid size of the grass to allow critters and bugs to run away before shaving all the area.
I read it's all about areas, because psychologically you feel like you are finishing a percentage of the garden and you get more drive to finish the whole task at hand.
And before shaving it all the area, I started doing more of it. This is a big garden, it's around 140 square meters, not an easy task for the uninitiated like myself.
The area started to look more like a garden and less like a jungle, I hope that you can appreciate the difference between one side and the other in these pics.
The amount of trimmed grass was immense and I wasn't even halfway through with this small odyssey. Of course the four dogs spent these five hours outside with me, partly because they love being outside when there's a human with them, but also because I closed all the doors that lead inside the house, lol.
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This little mountain is just half of what I trimmed, and you can already begin to wonder why I let so much time go by before getting shit done outside.
But after five hours of hard work I'm already tasting the beer I'll have in a couple of hours after I shower and get to the family gathering.
Feelsgoodman:
I don't think I'm the only one, but a beer after a morning of hard work tastes so much better, and seeing the results of your work is definitely a plus.
Now I want to ask, in case you kept reading til the end. Do you have any tips and gardener intel that you want to share with me? Because I think I really, really need that if I don't want to spend so much time outside with the sun above next time I do this.