Blow your leaves or mulch them?

[Zeke 5,504]

Me too, self relience, my castle, my home. I do pretty much everything myself including building my own house lol. And that paying someone else to do something I can bugs me. Cracks me up seeing all the neighbors with able kids hiring out lawn mowing....spoiled brats. However old age is catching up : (

You want it done right.....

[AVB-AMG 530]

On a slight drift.

It used to be landscape contractors were for the wealthy or commercial entities. Nieghbor kids would mow the lazy or elderly or handicapped residents. I am utterly amazed in my blue collar "lot by lot"town how many people pay to have the lawn mowed. 4 rods x 4rods worth of grass!

 

Are we too busy? Too lazy? Labor has become beneath us? Self reliance in America is a dying art.

Zeke:

 

Along those lines, I think that many of the older posters here had a similar experience to mine, back when I was a teenager, from 13-17 years old. While we were considered upper middle class/income, I was not given outright by my parents, material possessions that I desired. My parents told me that I had responsibility for all landscaping chores on our 4 acre property, which meant I had to cut the grass, rake the leaves and shovel snow from the driveway and walkway and was NOT paid for that work. After completing those tasks, I could then, (and did), go around our neighborhood and did the same landscaping work for interested neighbors for a reasonable $hourly rate or negotiated flat/set fee. (I was also told that I had to shovel the driveway and walkway of an elderly widow who lived two houses down from us and that I was to refuse any offered payment from her). Most of my friends were in a similar situation. My father told me he wanted me to learn the value of the dollar by working hard, so that I would understand and appreciate the correlation between the effort to earn money and the cost for material goods that I wanted. My parents also told me that I would be required to take 10% of my gross earnings and donate it to a charity of my choice, in order to instill in my mind the importance of helping out those less fortunate. From my net earnings I could decide to save or spend my money as I pleased. I think this is part of the evolution of our society from prizing self-sufficiency and a solid work ethic, to succumbing to a much easier service and consumer oriented culture where we pay others to do what is now considered menial labor. Our society has certainly changed its priorities and values in many ways from those earlier days...

 

I believe that today, many parents think that their kids need to spend all or most of their time when not in school, doing various extra curricular activities, sports, studying, etc. in order to expand their resume to successfully compete to get into a good college. Yet I also think that there is less emphasis by parents in insisting that their kids, (boys), perform personal hard physical labor and more on partaking in multiple activities to "enrich" one's experience. This transformation may have been inevitable but I do think it is also rather sad....

 

AVB-AMG

 

 

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[Zeke 5,504]

Well,the shame of that Avb is how many play pro sports? How many get college scholarships for athletics? How many graduates work at Starbucks?(etc)

 

It's almost a caste gamble.

I don't gamble, I jus do(stuff).