Here’s a tip — use craigslist to get your yard work done for free.
Our backyard is lovely; in fact, we held our wedding there. Now that the wedding’s past, maintaining all the plantings and gravel paths has become more trouble than it’s worth. Between trimming bushes, weeding pathways, and making space for our energetic eight-pound puppy to chase insects, we decided the easiest solution was to turn the area into lawn.
Before sowing grass, we needed to remove obstacles: shrubs, pea gravel, and the stone path. We didn’t want to haul everything to the dump, especially since the pea gravel had been laid just three months earlier for the wedding.
So we tried craigslist. Sherry posted a “free” listing on Tuesday morning at 9:30 with a photo and an offer for the bushes. I figured it wouldn’t get much attention, but within an hour our driveway began filling with people carrying shovels and pickaxes. By the time I returned from work, most of the shrubs were gone, leaving only a couple of sweaty, shirtless workers still digging. One fellow even handed over cash to claim six large bushes.
We posted another listing Wednesday morning for the pea gravel, and by evening nearly all of it had been raked, shoveled, and wheelbarrowed away. “Free” really is a universal motivator.
We didn’t do the heavy lifting ourselves — aside from handing out cold water — and the yard now looks a bit battered but much more ready for grass seed.
PS: We plan to save the wedding arch and relocate it elsewhere in the yard since we did get married beneath it.