10/13/2005 Archived Entry: "Landscaping"

Hiring a fucking landscaper is proving a considerable frustration.

The first landscaping we had done was on our back yard. The F&SN Critic and his wife found a guy they were happy with who re-did their back yard, and so we contacted him with enthusiasm. He came out and we consulted with him for a while and he seemed to understand exactly what we wanted--he did some quick pencil sketches and some planning, and promised to deliver unto us some "completed drawings" in a few days. When the drawings came in, they appeared to be 3rd-grad level map pencil scribblings, with a lot of stuff on them we didn't ask for.

Still, we pressed on, having him fix the drawings, and after we'd agreed on a price his crew showed up and made lots of mistakes and did things apparently at random. He eventually fixed most of the issues, but was frustrating to work with because his less-than-native grasp of English made it difficult to ensure we were getting across what we wanted to get across--we said several times, "Do this one thing," and he agreed, but when it came time to do that one thing, he did something completely different, and when we told him, "No, do the thing we told you to do," he would act confused.

Landscaper number two, this time for our front yard, again came with high recomendations from someone else, and he showed up with his assistant to do our estimate. He looked like he knew what he was about, but kept suggesting plants he'd like to have us buy, though we already have a huge stock of plants awaiting planting. After our initial estimate visit, he promised to have us a plan drawn up in a week or so, and never called us back. Multiple phone calls and voice mails have yielded no response from him. I can only assume he died.

Landscaper number three started out great--he was really positive and confident, listened attentively to everything we said, and had a good understanding of what The Wife and I wanted done to the yard. He took pictures of the places where we wanted bed expansions (a first!), and seemed like he was going to be a joy to work with. Unfortunately, he called us back after our estimate and said that he'd had a number of commercial jobs come up, and he wouldn't be able to get to us until late November, which is too late to put plants in the ground.

I have just finished making the appointment with landscaper number four, and The Wife and I are feeling a crushing mixture of disappointment and defeat, even before the estimate. How hard is it to get someone to come do some fucking landscaping in this town?

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