>Monks garden and clean things in part to increase self-awareness and inner tranquility.
I feel somewhat masochistic even uttering this, but I really enjoy pulling weeds by hand.
Please, let me explain why!
I just bought my first house this past year with a lawn that the previous owners left in considerable disrepair.
Weeds... weeds... creeping clovers of all types... and more weeds.
But there was a good 75% grass cover, so it felt wrong to rip it all up and replace it with sod.
We have a dog, and our previous one passed of bladder cancer, so roundup or any other herbicides were completely out of the question.
So I sat on a milk crate, and started digging at the dandelions at first with a garden tool.
That worked well enough.
But I was ripping up a lot of the grass with each punch of the garden tool, so I tried to start ripping them out by hand... and by George by worked!
I was weeding my lawn twice as fast now because I was just grabbing and ripping with my bare hands instead of an awkward tool.
Smiling every time I got the root, and grimacing every time I did not!
I was losing less grass.
But my back hurt.
Sitting on that milk crate and hunching over really did not sit well with my back.
So I tried bending over.
And my back felt great!
A few days later, I noticed a strange pain in my hamstrings.
Lactic acid was building.
But I hadn't been running or cycling or doing any kind of workout recently... or had I?
Bending over and placing your hands to the ground is actually a great stretch that I always considered myself somewhat incapable of doing. And I never did it regularly.
Yet there I was, stretching for an hour a day, out in the open sun and breeze. Hanging out with my dog.
Admiring my progress as the pile of weeds I picked grew, and the ground I stood foot on looked more like a real lawn... I was in heaven.
I now find myself weeding my lawn first thing every morning, before even eating breakfast sometimes.
I feel somewhat masochistic even uttering this, but I really enjoy pulling weeds by hand.
Please, let me explain why!
I just bought my first house this past year with a lawn that the previous owners left in considerable disrepair.
Weeds... weeds... creeping clovers of all types... and more weeds.
But there was a good 75% grass cover, so it felt wrong to rip it all up and replace it with sod.
We have a dog, and our previous one passed of bladder cancer, so roundup or any other herbicides were completely out of the question.
So I sat on a milk crate, and started digging at the dandelions at first with a garden tool.
That worked well enough.
But I was ripping up a lot of the grass with each punch of the garden tool, so I tried to start ripping them out by hand... and by George by worked!
I was weeding my lawn twice as fast now because I was just grabbing and ripping with my bare hands instead of an awkward tool.
Smiling every time I got the root, and grimacing every time I did not!
I was losing less grass.
But my back hurt.
Sitting on that milk crate and hunching over really did not sit well with my back.
So I tried bending over.
And my back felt great!
A few days later, I noticed a strange pain in my hamstrings.
Lactic acid was building.
But I hadn't been running or cycling or doing any kind of workout recently... or had I?
Bending over and placing your hands to the ground is actually a great stretch that I always considered myself somewhat incapable of doing. And I never did it regularly.
Yet there I was, stretching for an hour a day, out in the open sun and breeze. Hanging out with my dog.
Admiring my progress as the pile of weeds I picked grew, and the ground I stood foot on looked more like a real lawn... I was in heaven.
I now find myself weeding my lawn first thing every morning, before even eating breakfast sometimes.
I'm absolutely loving it.
And I hated doing "yardwork" when I was younger.