First mowing of the year

Yesterday was my first lawn-mowing of the year. Again! I was surprised to discover April 29th was the first time I mowed last year too! Haha. 

Our neighbors to the west have hired a mowing service, and I believe yesterday was their 4th or 5th time. Even our Burmese neighbors  (several houses around us) had already mowed. Still, I didn't think it looked all that bad. It does, however, look much nicer now.

Unlike last year, though, the grass wasn't even all that thick. I whizzed right through it (32 minutes). I'm not sure why our grass doesn't grow any thicker - we have it treated year-round - and they even do the 'plug thing' to it (which they just did a couple weeks ago). We're actually thinking of stopping with the lawn treatments, because we're just not sure it's really worth it. Yes, it's nice not having weeds, but it's expensive and probably not all that good for the environment in the long run.

Anyway, the lawn has been mowed. Now I need to get out the weed eater and edger and start tidying things up a bit outside. Apparently we're hosting a church party for a small group of people in a few weeks. I don't want to go all out in jazzing things up, but I'd like it to at least be comfortable for people to sit outside.

By the way, in the pic at the top, I had entirely killed everything in that picture last summer with weed killer (trying to finally eliminate the poison ivy), and it appears almost everything has grown back. No sign of the ivy yet though.