I have a plan now. It’s good to have a plan, because then you can hold yourself accountable for sticking to the plan. Since this is a plan for landscape maintenance, we’ll just have to see how far I go with it. But a plan is a plan, whether you actually implement it or not.

This is a new plan, because the old plan wasn’t working. The old plan was to do as much mowing as I could during the weekend, and then either pull weeds by hand or use the cordless trimmer during the week. The flaw in this plan was that I couldn’t do enough mowing at one time. Two days a week wasn’t going to be enough time to push the mower all the way through the big back yard. Ever.

Besides, there was always some reason I couldn’t take time to mow on Saturday. Or if I could do it Saturday, I couldn’t do it Sunday. So here I am mowing a tiny patch of weeds every weekend, while in the meantime the rest of the yard was growing back.

It was a losing battle with no victory in sight. Probably the president knows how I was feeling.

The new plan incorporates elements of the old plan, but the weekday routine is different. This reflects the fact that I was pretty much bailing on doing anything during the week anyway. So far I’ve stuck to the new plan for two whole days in a row, so I’m guardedly optimistic. Yesterday and today I’ve used the mower to go over small patches, mostly areas that have been previously mowed. I think that if I don’t try to overdo it at any one time, I’ll be more likely to stick with it.

I still have about half of the big back yard that hasn’t been touched since last August. That’s a lot of growing, and with the weather we’re having, it’s also a lot of drying out. It’s all golden brown now, and it’s nearly over my head. That’s the part I’m saving for the weekend. I just don’t know if there are enough weekends left in me to get to it all.