While most of America ventures out to find a bargain today, I continued with a tradition that started 8 years ago when I bought my house in NC. "Black Friday" is a very busy shopping day and I even joined in, but only to get things I needed to continue on with my tradition. I should not call this my tradition because it is shared by a large number of men (and maybe women who are not shopping) in the south eastern US. Not sure if many people do it here in south central US (North Central Tejas), but I know I did. What is the tradition that has been dubbed "Green Friday"?
Yard work.
To be more specific, "Green Friday" is the last major yard work day of the year. In the south we get to cut grass all the way into November (and we start in March or April) and my final cut is on Green Friday. Currently I have two yards to mow, trim, edge and clean up, so I spend 3 hours doing that. Since it is Green Friday, we get to add into the mix shrub, bush and tree pruning, as well as adding chemicals (fertilizer, weed preventer/killer, and bug spray). That can take another 5 hours or more but today we were unable to apply the chemicals and we did not get to trim the bushes and shrubs in my neighbor's yard, although I did manage to get some plants removed for her that she had requested a couple of weeks ago.
I started off the morning with a quasi-normal routine and as soon as I was up and alert (thank you French Roast coffee, extra strong, extra creamer) and Home Depot was open, I left to make my contribution to one of the busiest shopping days of the year. I bought 4 bags of fertilizer, 2 bags of weed killer/preventer, 2 packs of lawn bags, 1 gallon of Roundup, 1 gallon of heavy duty bug killer, a broadcast spreader (my old one fell apart), a bag of lava rocks (for the grill) and a landscapers rake (one of those tiny ones for getting in between shrubs). $117.07 and 30 minutes later, I was home with the hedge trimmers taking a chunk out of our out of control shrubs.
My wife and I have a pattern. I do all the big rough work and she does the detail/touch up work. This works out well and since we both usually clean up, we get done pretty quickly.
My wife got home from working out after I did a big chunk of trimming the shrubs and I had just started on the tree (low branches only this year). She came out and told me she would finish up and did so while I mowed our neighbors yard and removed the plants she asked me to do a couple of weeks ago. They are real fleshy plants that have a root bulb that grows very fast, much like Elephant Ear plants. You cut them down and they grow back the next year. The only way to kill them is to dig up all the roots. If you leave one little bit of root, they will come back.
By the time I had finished with our neighbor's yard, my wife was done trimming EVERYTHING in our yard. I started mowing our yard while she cleaned up and loaded up the truck with the branches from our Bradford Pear tree that she and I cut off. Each home in the neighborhood that we live in has at least one Bradford Pear in each yard. She was done before I was so she began cleaning the tools we used (hedge trimmers and pruners) so they would not rust. We learned our lesson about not cleaning tools when you are done.
Tomorrow we do not have a lot planned because we are having dinner with Mickey and Mary in the evening. I will clean house a bit (mostly vacuum and wash dishes) but not much else will get done unless I spread chemicals in our yard. I do not want to put any in our neighbor's yard until we have trimmed all her bushes and shrubs. That pays well :)
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