Most people who own motor homes worry about what they will find at home or what they might not find at home after a long trip. As we walk out the door, we tell the neighbours, plug the lights into timers, and set the alarm. Not our landscaper, but the people he hired to help him was our biggest worry.
Let's be honest: most landscapers aren't going to do a thorough check of their employees' criminal records. It was probably the weakest part of our plan to protect our home, since it's easy to tell when no one is there. Seeing the RV and its people missing a few times is an open invitation to people with less morals.
We saw an ad for a robotic lawn mower on the internet, so we decided to try it out. It went better than we thought it would. It went so well that I decided to start selling them. We gave it a name, Moe, like 80% of other robotic lawn mower owners.
We have the best neighbours anyone could ask for, okay, the nosiest neighbours anyone could stand to live near. Now, they not only watch the house when we aren't there, but they also watch Moe when we are.
Moe has been out in the yard for more than six months, but I still hear almost every day about where it went and what it ran into, along with comments like "I thought for sure it was going to..." If Nielsen ranked Moe, it would probably be higher than the Braves games in our area. Worse luck to the neighbour who didn't go with Moe!
Moe doesn't trim hedges, pull weeds, or edge, but it does a great job of keeping the yard trimmed. We have a neighbour kid come over and pull weeds when we are going to be gone for a while. We take care of the hedges ourselves because they only need to be taken care of twice a year.
We hadn't thought about the money we were giving to the lawn service, but when we stopped, we did. It was like a nice little pay raise without taxes. We are going to stop paying the mortgage next year because it was so fun.
We also didn't realise until recently that having someone else take care of the yard can be both nice and stressful. We both get a little bit nervous when strangers are in and around the house, whether we are there or not.
This way, we get the best of both worlds: the yard is being taken care of by a professional, and Moe is hardly a stranger.
Now if we could just convince our neighbours to get one too!
