Lawn Care Etiquette

It's that time of year again when home owners have to drag themselves out of the air conditioning and cut the grass and weed the flower gardens.  It's both terrible and satisfying at the same time.  You look at the lawn when you finish and it looks so nice.  You just have to deal with being out in the heat and humidity when you do it.  Or you could pay someone to do it.  That's always an option I suppose.  Our lawn is small enough that with a push mower I can get it done in less than an hour.  I remember cutting the grass growing up and my brother and I would split the work between the two side yards and the front and back yards.  It seemed to take forever when we did it, but that could just be because we were so young.  Living in a neighborhood where the houses are so close together, I have been thinking about law cutting courtesies.  At what time is it appropriate to get out and cut the grass?  When is it too early or too late in the day?  You don't want to be that house on the block that everyone hates because you cut the grass at the wrong time.  If you don't know which house is that house on your block, you might be that house.  Don't be.

I first started to think about this because I left for work one day a few weeks back and the owner of the house on the corner  was almost done cutting his lawn.  It was 7:00 in the morning.  My only thought was 'wow, what a dick'.  I understand a lot of people, myself included, would prefer to get the grass cut early in the day before it gets too hot outside.  I cut the grass this morning around 10:30 and it was already above seventy degrees.  It was not pleasant.  It is Friday and I figured it was a reasonable time.  Most people are at work if they have a standard Monday through Friday type job.  If there was anyone around that maybe works different hours like overnight or second shift type jobs, 10:30 shouldn't bother them, right?  The last thing that I would want is to be trying to sleep and a neighbor being out with a loud mower or weed whip. 

I'm not a huge fan of lawn work in the evening.  I always look at the evening as a time to relax and unwind from the day.  The last thing that I want to do after work is do more work.  Plus, it seems that bugs are more active in the evening.  Who wants to swat at mosquitoes and gnats and try to cut grass at the same time?  I know I don't.  However it could be the only time to do it.  It's not that I flat out refuse to do evening grass cutting, I just prefer to do so in the morning. 
 
How early is too early?  I suppose it depends on the day.  If it is during the weekend, and I want to be outside doing this, I might start a little bit later.  Most everyone catches up on sleep during the weekends.  During the week, I'll maybe start a little bit earlier than on the weekend.  An easy way to know is to just wait for someone else to start.  Let someone else be the asshole that wakes the neighborhood up.  Personally, I think 9:00 during the week and 10:00 on the weekend are perfectly acceptable times to start lawn work.