How Yard Maintenance Maintains You
When some people think of yard maintenance they think of hard work, hours spent sweating under the sun, and that it is a chore. When others think of yard maintenance they think of hard work, hours spent sweating under the sun, and a chance to reconnect with themselves. Most of modern society is geared towards getting away from what you are capable of as a human with a physical body, we rely more and more on our minds and our minds alone to complete work with the aid of our fingers and a computer. This has lead to great advances in society, but what about the costs to us, as complete people, with a connection to the Earth?
I was at a local topsoil suppliers pricing out bagged topsoil last week, when I thought back on my ancestors. They were all farmers, and I grew up on a farm myself. I had a deep connection to the land I grew up on. It sustained my family, the families of others, and was an endless source of amusement. Have you ever played hide and seek in a fully grown corn field? The seeker seldom wins. More than that, I spent many hours working the soil with my hands. How did I do this when we were a modern farm with tractors, combines and implements? I'm talking about the days I'd spend out in the fields picking rocks. I'm talking about the sweltering evenings picking weed and stray crop out of custom seed growing fields. And I'm talking about the days and days spent bailing and stacking hay. This was a real connection I had to the land, now here I was buying dirt to grow grass that I would likely cut every two weeks, not grow a garden, and possibly hire out the grass cutting when I bored of it. I felt disconnected.
Yard maintenance quickly became something that I began to view as an opportunity to reconnect with what made me a man. It was no longer a chore; it was a person being a person like many before. Like my ancestors I was working in the dirt, being with the plants, insects, and life that were there even after we'd tried to stamp out everything that wasn't cute. Yes there were times when it was something that made me tired and wondering what I was doing when I could be in my house watching sports or bad television, but I always reminded myself that this work was real. Watching the lives of others was not. It was hard work, but it was real work. I still feel conflicted about getting paid for this typing and writing of words. It is not work as my father understood it, but it is a commodity needed in today's world. Maybe I'm getting old fashioned and nostalgic in writing this now, but someday I'm going to go back to the farm. Fix one up, get it working, and have my yard maintenance work keeping me fit until then.
Weed Away is a family owned and operated green lawn care company that has been serving Canadians for over 30 years. Weed Away offers professional lawn care, weed control and garden soil products and services.
