[speaker001:] well do you like to do your yard work
[speaker002:] yeah this is actually a duplex that we're in so and it's rented
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker002:] we're looking into buying a house but um the landlord is supposed to do the yard work although he doesn't do it any frequency every once in a while he comes around so in the meantime we have our own lawn mower and we probably do it a little more than him
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] but we don't do a whole lot since it's a rental property we've added a few things like around the patio and I've tried to get a few shrubs to grow around here but since it's you know rental we haven't spent a whole lot of time and effort in trying to do landscaping we just kind of maintain what's here and mow the grass and trim and that kind of stuff when it's needed
[speaker001:] oh great what kind of lawn do you have
[speaker002:] you mean the type of grass um
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] what kind of a grass we have oh Saint Augustine yeah it's Bermuda in the back it's the kind that has those you know grows sideways yeah that stuff
[speaker001:] oh it grows in runners right right I just love that in the middle of the summer when that gets real thick that's so nice to walk on isn't it
[speaker002:] well the problem has been in the winter of um
[speaker001:] yeah two winters ago
[speaker002:] eight nine yeah a lot of it got zapped and it's it's slow coming back like our landlord didn't really replant any last year a lot of front lawn look looks pretty bad
[speaker001:] yeah yeah yeah
[speaker002:] and he didn't redo anything so it's it's coming back a little bit now this year
[speaker001:] well you know you know mine did and it was late at this time last year I held out no hope for it but I watered and fertilized the hell out of it and I by July and August it was as strong and thick as it had ever been
[speaker002:] oh really
[speaker001:] and uh and of course this year it never really died out that much I mean this year here it is only April and it's looking good yeah we had we had a mild winter we you know everybody in my neighborhood hires their yard work done and I think I think the fun of owning a house is doing the yard work
[speaker002:] it was very mild mild winter yeah
[speaker001:] and I mean I thought so I've owned a house for um twenty five of the of the thirty two years that I've been here in Dallas and I just enjoy it so much and uh and and particularly the lawn I love it dark I love to see it get a deep dark green
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] I love to uh I I love to mow it I don't like weeding the flower beds around the house and my son's supposed to do that but pretty every once and a while they get ahead of him so I end up doing that for him and and my wife sometimes takes care of the flowers
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] and so between us we got all our own little things to do
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and we got we got two girls off in college they don't do anything but uh I uh and I love to be out in the summertime I love to be out when the sun is really nice and hot and just go out there and sweat a bit mowing the lawn
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] I just love it in fact I uh mow my lawn but there's a gigantic vacant field in back of us uh that belongs to Richland College
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and everybody that we have that backs up to it mows about uh oh maybe ten or fifteen or twenty yards into the vacant lot to keep weeds from growing and coming over and seeding in your yard
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] so so we all even get more uh get more lawn to mow that way but uh it's fun
[speaker002:] do you back up to it on the south side or the east side
[speaker001:] uh I am on the east side of Richland in fact so Richland's on my west side when I look out my back door to see the sun set I look across the Richland field
[speaker002:] oh oh okay
[speaker001:] okay and
[speaker002:] because we had one of our uh a person similar similar stature to uh Gahouli from the legal department Mel Sharp he lives around in that area too he lives on Whiteman Place I think
[speaker001:] okay I I live on Wharton Drive
[speaker002:] okay
[speaker001:] and Wharton intersects uh uh it dead ends into Chimney Hill
[speaker002:] yeah yeah okay
[speaker001:] and then it it dead ends just dead ends up here where I live it runs uh it runs north and south from Chimney Hill north
[speaker002:] okay um
[speaker001:] uh anyway I love to do that and the other thing that I love is that I am a distance runner by hobby
[speaker002:] oh
[speaker001:] and some nights I'll come home from work like I did last night and with rain in the forecast and the lawn was getting pretty high I said I got to mow the lawn but I want to go out and run now which do I do first and I'm sitting around thinking well if I go out and run now because I messed around until almost seven uh six thirty or so if I go out and run now I'm going to get back and I'm going to be mowing the lawn and it's going to get dark and I'm going to have to guess where where the line is to mow so if I mow now then I'll go out and run afterwards and what the mowing does it limbers you up so that you go out and have a good run I finished up right at about dark and then I went out and ran four and a half miles and it was great just because the mowing it I I don't I didn't I don't have to do any stretching before running if I've been pushing the lawn mower around for an hour for an hour and ten minutes or so
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] so that's just you know I just I I I just really enjoy it and I hate to here see people gripe and moan about doing uh yard work what about trees do you have any trees around
[speaker002:] we got a couple of big trees out front um I guess right along our street there used to be one of the um lines I guess there was fields here many many years ago cotton fields or something and
[speaker001:] uh-huh you bet and I remember that
[speaker002:] yeah well we have a lot of trees that that go across our front yards that are very old that must have been like where the line was in between the fields so we have couple of huge trees out front that's pretty nice no trees really in the back
[speaker001:] yeah where the fence was or something yeah yeah how how how long have you live there Maureen
[speaker002:] almost two years
[speaker001:] oh do you have children oh okay
[speaker002:] no not yet we've only been married two years
[speaker001:] oh okay okay because you've got a a excellent elementary school over there uh our middle daughter went over there one year while ours was being built here and uh Richland Park is just a super neat school
[speaker002:] oh oh
[speaker001:] and they got a lot of neat programs the uh uh how often do you when when the when the uh growing season's good how often do you have to mow your lawn
[speaker002:] uh nearly every week
[speaker001:] yeah yeah I got I got so carried away with water and fertilizer last year in uh June July and the first part of August I was mowing every four days and I talked to my parents I'm from Massachusetts originally
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and I talked to my parents on the phone I said you know we Texans are a funny breed we we water we water we spend hundreds of dollars a month during the dry part of July August watering our lawn we go out and spend thirty or forty dollars a whack on fertilizer and then we bitch and gripe about having to mow it so often we said because we Massachusetters weren't like that we never did anything to it except mow it and and it always looked nice
[speaker002:] yeah that's right we never did this watering stuff everybody waters
[speaker001:] yeah we didn't do all that stuff here but they get more natural rain than we do you know we get so much rain in the spring and then we go sometimes entire June July and August without any so I guess we're where are you from originally
[speaker002:] yeah uh Philadelphia area
[speaker001:] oh okay so you've been in Texas how long
[speaker002:] eight years
[speaker001:] oh well you're you're almost a Texan I've been here thirty two years
[speaker002:] that's a long time
[speaker001:] yeah thirty two years and my wife's a Texan so of course naturally my children but they still think I'm a Yankee
[speaker002:] uh-huh and I was never called that until I came here
[speaker001:] yeah isn't that funny I wasn't either I have uh
[speaker002:] and I I was just taken aback by that
[speaker001:] yeah when I got here my uh uh best friend who was my office mate when I first got here in nineteen fifty nine said the only Yankees he could ever stand wore pinstripes suits and played baseball but but people weren't as mobile then as they are now I mean I will bet half of your neighborhood or three quarters of it and I know it's true with ours is not from Dallas is not even from Texas
[speaker002:] well I keep reminding these people that it's good thing we came down here and got some changes made like
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] shopping on Sunday I said it's a little hard to do everything on Saturday no pass no play uh kind of thing I said you know we had that for years in Ohio and Pennsylvania
[speaker001:] yeah huh  yeah uh I yeah that's true that's true we did we did and uh do you all do you all uh do you all have to water a lot over there
[speaker002:] uh pretty much and our landlord always asks us to uh continue doing that even though we pay for the water because of you know foundation problems around here
[speaker001:] oh yeah because of the foundation problem you know that's an interesting thing I've had two overseas assignments with TI uh I was in uh Malaysia eighty one eighty two eighty three and eighty four and I was in the Philippines eighty five eighty six and eighty seven and I had two different tenants
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] and my first one kept the inside of the house nice this is a two story five bedroom and uh uh they only lived in the downstairs because he was divorced and had two children and they only visited him one weekend a month
[speaker002:] uh-huh um
[speaker001:] and that was the only time the upstairs was so the upstairs looked as new as we left uh they only lived downstairs uh and and his wife was an interior decorator and the house was just kept very nice you know I've I've heard horror stories from other TIers that have had tenants but he didn't like yard work and what happened was the Saint Augustine grew up you know if you don't watch it and keep it trimmed back it will totally take over your flower beds
[speaker002:] um oh yeah
[speaker001:] well when we came back what used to be our flower beds were solid Saint Augustine we had to we had to dig it out and the second tenant when we went to the Philippines the second tenant he had two little girls
[speaker002:] oh uh-huh
[speaker001:] and so they lived throughout the entire house he also had a dog in the house that I didn't know about and so our carpeting was in bad shape when I got back but uh my yard was immaculate he did a great job on the yard so you so I guess you can't have everything
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] but but you're right and I guess that's very important because of this black earth with have here that cracks terribly uh and it shifts badly in the summertime that uh if you don't water around the foundation you're going to lose it
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and uh and boy I'll tell you you've really got to have a conscientious tenant and it's hard for him to be conscientious when he's thinking of paying a hundred dollar water bill uh every uh uh I you know every month when you get into the June July and August time period
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and how how big is your duplex
[speaker002:] um each side has three bedrooms and two baths living room and then a big uh kitchen that has uh dining area in it
[speaker001:] oh okay they're they're fairly big yeah uh-huh
[speaker002:] so each side is like seventeen hundred square feet
[speaker001:] yeah yeah well where uh where did you go to school
[speaker002:] uh Ohio State
[speaker001:] oh you went to Ohio State oh you're uh up in the Woody Hays country huh
[speaker002:] right and I was I was going to school in his prime back when we had Archie Griffin and we were winning all the Heisman trophies and going to Rose Bowl that was when I was going to school there
[speaker001:] uh yeah yeah yeah yeah we were really excited about the we're