So guess what's happening tomorrow? Tomorrow is lawn mowing day. Always an exciting time at my house. Well, for me, because I love my front yard.
Let's be grateful about that. Well, hello. I'm Michael Gross. This is The Daily Grateful.
And I am grateful for St. Augustine grass, because that's the temp grass I have in my front yard. In the backyard, it's behind grass. I should tell you a little bit about my backyard.
I've given my backyard away. My son's ex-girlfriend is into nature and doing everything naturally and recycling. She, all of this stuff, she's got me recycling. Minimal waste, all of it, she's a great cook.
Anyway, all of this stuff, she wanted to take over the yard. I said, well, you can take over the backyard, but I'm keeping the front yard. She goes, why? I said, because I love taking care of the front yard.
It's mine. I'm going to take care of it. And you can have the whole backyard. Well, I thought I'd give her a million bucks.
And she's in charge of the backyard. She's not going to mow the backyard anymore. That's interesting. We're going to see how it goes.
And what's growing up all over the backyard right now is something that I've always considered to be weed. It's called blue toad facts. And it is tall. I'm telling you, I walk out there and it's right up to my butt.
Yeah. And it has these beautiful little purple flowers all over it. I don't know why we there's what I call false fan line, a little white flowery thing. And I just, you have no idea the way I've always prevented these weeds from happening is I have mowed the yard on a regular basis so they can't go to seed.
I'm not mowing the backyard. So these things are going to seed and they're multiplying and they're taking over the backyard and there's butterflies. And I was sitting out there with her the other day and I'm looking around and she says, you don't like this. You guys, I don't know.
But then, you know, she's look, look at that butterfly, look at that butterfly over there. Next thing I know, I'm looking at about two or three different butterflies. There's a monarch butterflies. There's all these other things out there.
And I said, yeah, that's interesting. She said, don't you want to do the front yard? No. The front yard is going to be the way I like it.
I like my front yard fertilized. I like it edged. I don't want weeds in it. I don't do mulch.
She goes, you don't do mulch? I said, no, I don't do mulch. Why don't you do mulch? I said, I like bare ground.
Why? Because nutritionally, okay, nutritionally, plants like bare ground. If you're like my shrugs, they like bare ground under them. Mulch has a tendency to suck out nitrogen from the ground.
And so you're competing for nutrients in the soil when you have mulch. I've never been a mulch. I learned this, by the way, from a guy named Garth Craig in like 1973. Old farm.
Mulch is bad. I don't know why because mulch was just like taking off back in those days. He goes, that stuff just sucks the nutrients out of the ground. I don know why people are doing this.
And he's right. It does. It's a nitrogen hog. So I don't mulch.
But I do spray Roundup. Actually, I don't spray Roundup. I spray the generic version of Roundup because Roundup is too expensive. But glyphosate is the active ingredient and you can buy the generic version of it a lot cheaper.
And I spray, you know, I keep the weeds down with that. And it works rather well for me. I like it. And so we're having this back and forth on what is the best for the lawn.
And I'm letting her take over the bed. Thank God there's a six foot privacy fence around so the neighbors aren't going to see it. But I'm not going to have weeds drawn up to my front yard because the neighbors see it. I've lived here for going on 18 years.
And I want to keep my neighbors happy. I like my neighbors. My neighbors like me. I have no enemies in this neighborhood.
I talk to everyone. I have wonderful conversations with everyone. This is a nice little. I live in a cul-de-sac.
Kind of a long cul-de-sac. Let's cul-de-sac and lust. And I know everybody here just about. And I talk with just about everybody here.
Both my neighbors died last year. Al, he was in his 90s. We used to have conversations every day. We had a conversation the day he died.
Or the day before he died. He died that night. He went to bed and didn't wake up. The other side was another guy.
And his name is Jay. He was an auto mechanic. I had an auto mechanic business for years. And he had a stroke like a year and a half ago.
He was in the hospital for a year before he finally passed. That was an interesting time here. But I know all the wives and I'm friends with everybody. I like my neighbors.
I like my yard. I like going out and looking at it. You know what I like? I just love a freshly edged yard where there's this nice solid edge.
You can get away with, you know, not the most perfect yard. But if it has a good edge to it, I feel good. See, I'm grateful for strange things. Does that make me strange?
I hope it does. I hope it makes me very strange. But, you know, I could be passionate about a lot of other stuff. I know people who are passionate about alcohol.
I've never understood that. I know people who just, I go to the bar. I go to the bar once in a while but I never drink it. I go there to eat sports bar food.
There's a place called Morton's in Dunedin. I get the little sliders. They're delicious. Anyway, I hope you're having a terrific day.
We'll visit more tomorrow. We'll see you next time.