At West Point, the privatized housing company, Balfour Beatty, comes to mow all of the lawns that don't have fences. We, of course, have a fence which we accepted from the previous tenants.
We thought we were being nice not to make the retirement eligibles have to remove it on their way out. Plus, we had a small child at the time with thoughts of more small children - maybe a lot of them. A fence is good when you have small children, isn't it? We thought so!
When Balfour Beatty took over, the somewhat angry Department of Public Works and Housing took back their community lawn mower. So, now we have a fenced, unmowed lawn, and no access to the lawn mower we previously used to mow it. With that option out, I tried to slip the guys with the weed eaters a 20 spot to come spend thirty seconds trimming our yard. It wouldn't even take that long it's so small - but, alas, they yelled something about liability over the noise of the machines and moved on.
So - here we are as a family all cutting the lawn. It's not exactly even or weeded, but the boys sure had a good time. As an aside, Balfour Beaty is giving out a yard of the month prize based on appearance and "effort." I'm not sure about appearance, but I think we should win based on effort alone.
