Living in the country is both a blessing & a curse on some days.
On the one hand, the views out here are gorgeous & I have much more peace and privacy than I’ve ever had in our entire life. And if I want to drink Coca-Cola on our back porch in our boxers, I won’t have to worry about a neighbor seeing me from a fourth story window. However, the intense beauty & tremendous isolation can sometimes become eclipsed by larger complications that you don’t regularly face living closer to society. Part of the struggle is taking care of a yard that is literally 10 times the size of those found in most subdivisions. There is a lot of mowing, weeding, grass seeding, & raking. These chores are complicated by the plain fact that the two of us have dozens of maple trees, oak trees, & pine trees all throughout both the front & backyard. You have to be especially mindful of the leaves & branches that settle on my rooftop as they can lead to rotting & potential water leaking in the attic. But the leaves & wet debris get into other sensitive areas as well. Just love any other person with a split level Heating & Air Conditioning system, I have our condenser device laying outside on a stone foundation. Although the condenser has a metal cover, large quantities of leaves & tree twigs wriggle their way into the grills & can collect at the base of the condenser or get cottaged in the fan’s assembly. If I don’t scrub these leaves out biweekly, I could lose our condenser device completely. My Heating & Air Conditioning professional told me that it’s substantial because the AC manufacturer doesn’t regularly accept warranty claims if the damage was caused by neglecting the basic cleaning & service.