First Ten Yards

The 50 Yard Challenge

The dynamic duo

 

I love the look of a nicely mowed lawn. Especially one that is edged just right. Mmmmmmm. I also love to mow lawns. So when I saw Episode 9, Season 1 of a BYUtv show called Making Good I was intrigued.  It's about a guy named Rodney who started a charity -- Raising Men Lawn Care Service. Rodney challenges kids all over the United States to mow 50 yards. The catch is that they have to mow lawns for people who have a hard time doing it themselves -- the elderly, the disabled, single moms and yes, people with MS qualify too -- and they have to do it for free. I guess the other catch is that you have to be between the ages of 7 and 17 to accept the challenge. I really wanted to do the challenge but I'm a couple years past 17 ;-) So I talked my kids into taking the challenge :-) For every 10 lawns they mow they get a different colored t-shirt. They start with a white t-shirt and at 50 they get a black t-shirt. Kind of like getting a black belt, eh? Anyhow. We need to take pictures to document each lawn so I thought we'd just blog about it here and send the link rather than sending a bunch of pictures. So here are the first 10 yards. PS You'll notice that doing yard work can also count if the people don't want their lawn mowed.

Yard One August 12, 2021-- Judy

Judy is our longtime neighbor. Her husband passed away 4 or 5 years ago. Judy is the epitome of service. She serves everyone around her. She says it helps to keep her from being sad. That reminded me of Rodney. Matthew has been working for Judy all summer doing yard work to earn money. When we told her about the 50YC she was so excited. She squealed and exclaimed, "I qualify!" :-) She was so grateful to have the ivy cut back and the apples picked up. We tried to help her straighten her peach tree. It's leaning quite a bit. That still needs work. A lot of good work was done though. And in typical Judy fashion she gave us leads on several people in our neighborhood that we can approach with the 50YC. I was a bit exhausted after three yards in one day (and I didn't even do any mowing!) so we will have to approach them on another day.

during

after

Yard Two August 12, 2021 -- Griffins

We posted on Facebook asking for lawns to mow. We've only gotten two takers so far. A lady, Jessie, messaged me and told me about her grandparents. They are in their late 80's early 90's. When we got there we knocked to let them know we were there and get any special instructions. No answer. Jessie told us that they might not remember we were coming so I didn't want to start and upset them when they saw strangers mowing their lawn. So we texted Jessie. She said they were probably still in bed and that it was ok to just start. When we got to the back we found grandma (forgot to ask her name) in the back doing some weeding. She said she appreciated the lawn mow but what she really needed was help with a stubborn plant she wanted removed. Annalisa helped her with that while Matthew finished up the back yard. She was so pleased :-) She got Fat Boy ice cream bars for each of us. The kids were excited at the prospect of treats at future houses. I didn't want to say anything but..... I'm not sure each house will be giving them treats :-) Jessie is a single mom. She was grateful to have a break from helping her parents with the yard. We tried to talk her into letting us do her lawn too. She wouldn't let us. Maybe later.

Yummy treats!

Yard Three August 12, 2021 -- Charles

Charles' daughter saw our FB ask and messaged me. When I read her text I misread it and thought her dad's name was Charlie. In retrospect this man was definitely a Charles and not a Charlie. I hope he wasn't offended by my mistake! He was a very nice, stately elderly gentleman. He was also recovering from surgery.  It's hard to tell from the pictures but the before and after are different! The kids bagged 4 bags worth of grass (I should have gotten that picture). Phew! Hard work. No Fat Boys though. On our way home Annalisa asked if we could stop and get a sprite at McDonald's. I said yes. The kids were so surprised! Yes, I'm a bit of a tightwad. I never stop when they ask to stop at McDonald's. Their reaction was well worth the $2.17 we spent on Sprite :-) Next time we will bring our water bottles :-)

Charles

ready to weed wack

after

Yard Four August 14, 2021 -- Carol

Carol is another wonderful neighbor who let us come and mow her lawn. She is a widow of several years. I think we are getting a good rhythm. Working together well as a team. This lawn went really smoothly. One kid mows and one kid weed wacks the edges. I help load the grass into the bag when it's full and do random weeding while they do the lawn. Some of the interesting things we found -- lots of apples, a broken tree branch, and a dead bird.

Dead bird

long grass

two thumbs up

during

after (back) Doesn't that look good?

after (front)

Yard Five August 16, 2021 -- Tina

Another wonderful neighbor. For this yard the kids went alone and took the pictures. We need to still get a picture of the kids with Tina. They only wanted the front lawn done. The front lawn is a bit challenging because of two massive tree stumps. Matthew and Annalisa did a great job!

Before

After

During

Yard Six August 16, 2021 -- Claudia

We told my friend Claudia about the challenge and asked if we could do her lawn. She said we could but that it would be even better to get rid of the weeds in her ditch. Usually on Monday nights we do things together as a family. We each take turns choosing the activity each week. Typically we watch a movie and have ice cream. This week was my week to choose the activity. I chose weeding and lawn mowing :-) I forgot to tell Claudia though. Oops. When we got there she wasn't home and it looked like they had just had the lawn mowed. So we started tackling the weeds in the ditch. Matthew took one look at the weeds and immediately noticed the thorns and goat heads. He also knew that the gloves we had would not protect us from the thorns. He was not excited. We had shovels though and so we pressed forward. The roots were shallow so they were easy to pull but the thorns were not fun. We ended up only finishing about half of the ditch in the hour before it got dark. Four garbage bags full. I was soooo sore afterwards. And that was with all five of us working together! 

Very happy neighbor :-)

Lots of weeds. Prickly, prickly weeds :-)

Yard Seven Aug. 28, 2021 -- Steve and Sue

Steve and Sue are neighbors to my sister Marianne. They are elderly and let us come and mow. My sister lives about 30 minutes from us. When we got down there we discovered we had forgotten our mowing bag -- again! So we ended up mulching. Their lawn was short enough that mulching worked great. 

Before

With Steve

After

Yard Eight Aug. 28, 2021 -- Marianne

Marianne is my sister. She has MS. Her lawn was super long so we used her lawn mower for the front and bagged the grass. The back yard is fairly large so we used both our lawn mower and her lawn mower. Since we had to mulch with our mower we put the lawn mower on its highest setting. It worked pretty good. By the time we were finished Marianne had already left for a prior commitment so we got a picture with her daughter Micah. Two more lawns and we'll have 10! Woohoo!

Matthew, Micah and Annalisa

Big lawn. We used our mower and their mower.

Yard Nine Sept. 8, 2021 -- Grandma Virginia

Grandma Virginia has her son and his kids mow her lawn. They have a lawn mowing business. So instead of mowing her lawn we picked her plums for her. In the hour that we were there we only got half the tree. We will come back next week to get the second half of the tree. 

With Grandma Virginia

Picking up the mushed plums that fell to the ground.

And this was only half of the tree's produce!

Before

Yard Ten Sep. 11, 2021 -- Leica

Lecia is another wonderful neighbor. She lives up the road from Judy. She is an older single woman and she has a great yard. We asked if we could mow her lawn and she told us that she was once told that if she would mow her own lawn she would stay healthier. She wouldn't let us mow but she did have something we could do. She has this wonderful pine tree in her yard. I should have gotten a picture of the entire tree. It's huge. Anyhow. There are a lot of vines that grow under the tree. She can't get down on her knees to get the vines so she let us help her. 

Lecia and the kids

Some of the vines.

After

A really cool spider she showed us in her yard.

Woohoo! Ten yards done. Forty to go :-)

Lessons Learned

What I have learned 1) It's a lot easier to mow a lawn than to do an hours worth of weeding!, 2) It's sometimes hard to find people who will let us come serve them

What Matthew has learned so far  1) it's hard to mow a lawn you haven't mowed before, 2) mulching is really nice

What Annalisa has learned so far 1) bring a tarp in your car, 2) don't forget the bag for your mower!, 3) Mom is most agreeable to getting us stuff directly after mowing a lawn. Ask her for a sprite :-)

I'm excited to see what other lessons we will learn with our next 10 yards! One thing that this experience is teaching me once again is to be grateful for the ability to do things. Grateful for health. Grateful for a lawn mower and for knees that let me bend down and get back up. Grateful for time to do this. And lastly, grateful for Rodney and this wonderful challenge :-)