Yard Work is HOW Much?!!

Matt is the unofficial landscaper of our house, and he does a very nice job watering, mowing and trimming. But in the summer months, it gets really difficult to find a time when it's cool enough to be outside and also light enough to see what you're doing. So a few months ago, we came up with the great idea to hire someone just once during the summer to do the dirty work for us. A little treat to ourselves - a reward for being so frugal and doing it ourselves the rest of the year. And we figured it would cost about $50, right? So then we let the yard grow out nice and full so we would get our money's worth out of this landscaper we were going to hire.

Flash forward to this week, when Matt calls around to get quotes. 3 visits later, and we find out the absolute cheapest anyone will do the work for is $100!!!!! Am I just cheap, or does that seem outrageous to anyone else? It normally takes the two of us an hour to get the job done, and you'd think it would take a professional half that time, no? One self-professed arborist (who takes care of your trees with a holistic approach - oooh! aahh!) wanted to charge $225!

So then I had a heart attack and when I recovered we got out the gloves and the trash bags and headed outside. Matt worked the hedge trimmer while I followed behind and picked up clippings. 90 minutes, 8 trash cans, 5 scrapes, 4 bottles of water and one thorn (sorry Kim!) later, we tamed the jungle down to a nice garden. It was quite a work-out. When we were done, I realized that I hadn't seen our fence in a few months due to the overgrowth - whoops! So from now on we're back on our maintainance plan so we don't make that same mistake twice. And we are treating ourselves to a nice dinner out as a reward - which feels a lot better than paying some schmuck $100!