When I turned nine, I thought that the only reason my parents had kids was to do all the chores they did not want to do. This was all the chores. When I was nine, I weighed about 45 pounds wet. My hands reached the top of the handle of the lawnmower. I could push the lawnmower okay. I just did not necessarily know which part of the lawn I was mowing. When you are little, the lawn appears to be pretty big. I had never seen a riding lawnmower at that time so I did not know what I was missing. I had seen many snow.blowers but we did not have one of those either.
In my neighborhood, there were no landscapers or lawn care companies coming around every week to do lawn work. Everyone did their own. This was a small city in New York. People who lived in the house took care of all of the chores. When I was nine, I wanted to be seven. This would stop from all extra chores except for cleaning my room.
Move forward to senior year in high school. Now, we are in sunny Southern California. The yards are about three times as small as what we had in New York. Two out of every three lawns used a lawn service. If you ever watched the lawn service, it took them about ten minutes to cut the lawn. It would take maybe another five minutes to trim and fertilize. They received $20-25 a week for this service. It is pretty decent money for such short work. In Indiana, the yards were an acre or more. The small yards were still a good half acre. The lawn service companies out there were charging $45 a week to cut. At least, you could justify it with a larger lawn.
As I started to pay more attention, landscaping services started to encompass a whole bunch of skills. I would see teams cutting lawns, trimming trees, planting trees, and building some really nice looking landscapes. In California, if you really want to see some nice landscapes, you just drive to the rich neighborhoods. Some of the yards looked so nice, you almost wonder if they paid any attention to the bills from their landscaping company. Charging a whole bunch of money per contract and only having to do minimum work. Of course, that's just me thinking out loud. I'm sure there are rich folks that know exactly how much they pay their gardener.
What happens next. You become a parent and think that your own kids will have instilled the same sense of chore duty as you had via heredity. This is not the case. You show them how to do the chores down to the detail. They do the detail if they are doing work and getting paid for it. At home, I have to inspect the lawnmower bag just to make sure it is empty. Then, I have to go back and double check to insure the lawnmower actually makes it into the garage. Heck, the kids have a dishwasher. Growing up, I was the dishwasher. I think my youngest son stays thin as an excuse to not push the lawnmower.
