Nice lawns are nice...
but they require work!!!! My lot is large enough for me. My dog can run full stride back and forth and around in my back yard, so its big enough for me and my dog.... (
if I can get the dog to stop digging holes, that would be good)
- Maintaining the lawn and shrubbery is work, and I installed a new fence last year, but it still requires to be edged along the fence line. Hedges need to be trimmed, dead roses have to be clipped from the rose bush.
I did a small garden during the Pandemic, it was a lot of work "doing the weeding". I think I'd like to have a nice well built "green house".
All these things are nice people speak of as to usages of land space, but it not much of a problem for people who have always done it.
- I had to adjust myself to start doing my lawn, because for the first 15 yrs I had a lawn service, but I bought a zero turn, and other lawn maintenance equipment a year ago because I like my grass cut weekly. (for me personally, it has to be maintained well)
I have one large Pine Tree, I will have cut down.... but I have neighbors who have as many as 12-15 trees, and pine straw is everywhere. Before my neighbor cut down two along the fence line, I had pine straw on my roof and each time it cost money to have it removed.
- I just replaced the roofing shingles a couple months ago. Thank goodness none of the pine trees are close so I no longer have the issue of his pine straw falling on my roof. But he has Oak trees, and in the fall, the leaves fall in my yard; and that's a chore, because it takes a couple months for all the leaves to fall off.
Home maintenance is always work.
- I keep my back yard as neat as my front yard. After living in California for over 30+ yrs, it was standard habit that front and back yard both were well manicured and shrubbery well trimmed. So, I do the same where I live now. But, when I think, even growing up in a country town we kept our yard nice and clean and we had a garden that was kept nice.
Now, most of the cookie cutter homes in some of the suburbs, don't always have much yard, and some gated communities have houses that are close together and very shallow front yards and some have shallow back yards as well.
What happens to large acreage when people get older... turns into a whole different challenge. I've seen many that fall into
overgrowth when people get older and don't have the money to hire someone to keep it up. Especially in areas where there are lots of vine type and poison ivy grows like crazy, and other type of vine things that grow all over the place.
- I see some people who do lots of various things to their yard, and some don't choose the right plants and they eventually grow very large.
Gardening (Vegetable Growing) is no joke... one has to be fit and acclimated to doing that type of work, to really maintain it.