Cutting Crew

When I first moved to Florida twenty six years ago, I noticed gangs of men laboring in people's yards. Some looked Mexican, but mostly they were Haitian. Up and down most residential streets you would see them, all sweaty and hot looking (Not in the good way), cutting the grass, trimming the hedges, and blowing yard clippings around. Where I came from nobody cut your grass and nobody trimmed your hedges but you. I don't believe I ever saw a yard crew before moving to Florida. Nobody in Florida cuts their own grass, in fact I'm pretty sure that while the landscaper crews are at work they have other landscape crews cutting the grass at their homes. I was a holdout. When I bought my first house here back in 1989, I was the guy who cut the grass, I trimmed the hedges, and I blew the trimmings off the property and out into the street. That is something I continued to do right up until a year ago. Yes, I finally gave in and hired a yard guy. Once a month I have a guy come who trims all the shrubbery, lops off errant tree branches, and weed whacks the weeds with a weed whacker. And when he is all done with that he takes his high powered leaf blower and blows it all away and out of my life. I don't know what took me so long. I now look at my yard with a different perspective because I don't see a never ending job. It is now nothing more than my yard, and it looks neat and clean, and it is wonderful.

By the way, I mentioned that where I grew up nobody had people who took care of their yards, that no army of sweaty young men cut the grass, trimmed the bushes, and did all that hot, nasty work. That is not necessarily true. My dad did, my dad had landscape technicians who did all the yard work. It was a very large crew and they worked cheap. Really cheap.