To NOT offer to help NDN with lawns

[UserFriendly14]

NDN is in her 90’s and lives alone. She has Carers come in twice a day to make sure she’s eating etc. DC live away and have obviously not visited during lockdown. Both front and back gardens are overgrown and need tending to. Me and DH keep discussing whether or not to offer to help out with the gardens but with a young family ourselves, and DH working full time still, it’s hard enough to find the time to sort our own home/garden out. (Seriously he’s still out in our garden now after cleaning our windows).

The gardens are sizeable and would take a good day, if not more, to make right. The thing that sticks in DH’s throat is that 1- this has happened before when DC have gone a while without visiting, so they know well about it. 2- she has a window cleaner, who repeatedly and loudly told her [and half the street] that her DC would be paying her, so no need to worry about her paying. I’m not for a second saying how others should be spending their money, but DH has stated a gardener really wouldn’t be out of the question if it came to it. (As I said, sizeable gardens so a lot work round here and forever getting leaflets put through the door etc.)

Another point is, her memory is patchy at best, so would she remember that we’d said/agreed earlier in the day that he’d help out? (It really is painful to have a brief conversation with her).

Fully prepared to be flamed and told to go and be neighbourly.

I wouldn't offer actually. It sounds like a big job. We couldn't manage our own medium sized garden when we had young dc. Sounds like you can't even manage yours either at the moment.
The long grass will be good for wildlife.
I would probably try and chat to her carers and offer some contacts for local community helpers or gardeners, bit not offer to take on the task itself under your circumstances.

I think asking her if she’s happy for you to contact one of the volunteer groups in your local area, as suggested above, is the perfect solution!

As a teenager I earned my money mowing lawns locally, most were elderly customers. One old lady in particular enjoyed the company and always served tea and a slice of cake. Surely there is someone in need of pocket money who could help out?

Why don't you just mind your own business? Maybe they don't care about the garden right now and will deal with it when they can. Do you think they are all too stupid to realise that the garden is overgrown and that you are the only one smart enough to have realised?
Just concentrate on your own garden and leave the lady alone.

Her children are aware she has a garden so it will occur to them sooner or later, as with the window cleaner.

Gardening is hard work, mine takes several hours a week.

If you do it, you'll have done a good deed - more good because you didn't want to, but you did it anyway. Extra halo points for that.

If you don't do it, you'll sit and watch an elderly person's outdoor space become less and less enjoyable by a woman at the end of her days with few pleasures left,, while you listen to the sound of the same very elderly woman seemingly mowing the same patch of lawn.

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs...

Id say no. DP would say no
She can get a gardener or her kids can come do it

We tried to help out our elderly neighbor, ended with us being taken advantage of

Jesus H Christ @CauliflowerBalti I don't know whether to laugh or cry

It’s never wrong to be kind. Don’t do it if it’s too much for you, but if you can manage it, then yes, it would be a kind thing to do.

If you don't do it, you'll sit and watch an elderly person's outdoor space become less and less enjoyable by a woman at the end of her days with few pleasures left,, while you listen to the sound of the same very elderly woman seemingly mowing the same patch of lawn.
You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs...

LMAO overreacting much?

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs...

Much as I would normally say to leave them to it but it is heartbreaking that you say you hear a 90 year old trying to mow a small area. If you can do it fair enough but perhaps highlight to her carers to contact her family?

I get that you don't want to have the responsibility of doing someone else's garden, that's fine, but don't use the excuse of having a child. It's 1 child and there are 2 of you.

Ffs! How depressing to read some of these replies. What's happened to people in this country.
The woman is elderly, needs carers and her adult children don't live nearby. If this were in my village volunteers would take it in turns to keep her garden under control and make sure She was ok.
I appreciate that The op doesn't have much time to help, but how long would it take her to find out If there was a local volunteer group who could.

Here CauliflowerBalti have a biscuit

This thread is really depressing. Just mow the fecking lawn.

It's only grass. Just leave it, the bees will be happy
Isn't grass wind-pollinated?

Thanks for all the replies. As I put in my OP I was prepared to be flamed, so I do take it all on board.

The most obvious thing seems to me to be to offer to help to find her a gardener if she would find that helpful

I agree with other posters who have felt this is a depressing read.

Just to give another point of view, not all older people want to be organised...my dad is 88, lives 2.5 hours away, is in full charge of his faculties and his life, drives, etc etc. I went to visit him last week, hadn't seen him since a pub lunch half way between our homes at the end of February due to lockdown. I took a picnic lunch, sat in his garden for 4 hours catching up. It was a state...weeds choking the beds, patio with weeds a foot high, lawn needs doing etc. He DOESN'T CARE! He won't pay for someone to come in regularly, ( he can afford it) but chooses not to. Maybe your neighbour is like my dad. I felt awful but realistically we are too far away to be of any practical help. My husband offered to do the grass while we were there but was told NO very definitely! We are not lazy but my dad would give us short shrift if we tried to organise anything for him.

Elderly doesn't necessarily mean impoverished does it
^^this!
MIL was asking Dh to pop round each week to cut the lawn, despite him going round at other times socially to check she was ok, if she needed anything etc. We have enough of our own jobs to be getting on with at home and she can well afford to pay some one to do her lawn. So we helped arrange this for her. She just hadn’t really thought she was the kind of person to employ a gardener, but she couldn’t manage it herself and can afford to pay someone to do the job.

It's good for for wildlife/biodiversity to let the grass get long for a season. I'd leave it.

We used to regularly mow the lawn for our neighbour- garden 8mx 27m. If my husband cut his grass he cut hers too, didn’t take long. Few nights in the summer we would jump the fence and pull the big weeds out, no digging or anything. She had family but they fell out years ago. We had a 2 year old and a baby but didn’t seem like a big deal.

I was joking. Kinda. The image of you sitting there rocking listening to a 90-year old woman mowing one patch of lawn is very psychological horror. Silence of the Lambs.

But only kinda joking. Because there are loads of things in life that are a ballache but you do them anyway, and mowing a 90-year old woman with dementia’s lawn during a pandemic is one of those things. She’s in the last 1% of her life. In all likelihood into low fractions of a percent. You either do it, or the lambs/lawnmowers scream. I didn’t make the rules.