Rules of Engagement: Perform All Work Yourself

The G.Y. fights his own fight—he pays no proxies or mercenaries to do his bidding. He weighs exceptions with great care, including in supply (tool manufacture, material delivery) and dangerous or specialized tasks (tree trimming, stump removal, concrete pouring). Aside from draining his limited finances, paying others to conduct combat operations defeats the yardvolution’s purpose. It is the insurgent himself, rather than mercenaries—landscaping crews, gardeners, or neighborhood kids—who turns his vision into reality; the yardvolution cannot be outsourced.

Paying a gardener or a landscaping company to do the work generates a mediated reality, in which the home and yard owner controls his yard only to the extent his money does. By contrast, the guerrilla yardworker himself creates and retains control over his reality.

To see a plant grow from a sapling that he planted into a prosperous bush; to pick tomatoes from a plant he nourished from a start on his window sill; to see daffodils signal each and every spring from the bulbs he stored in the shed all through the winter; in brief, to co-opt Nature with his own hands and a few tools into fulfilling his wishes provides the guerrilla yardworker with satisfaction that only comes from creation.

* Excerpted from the book. Buy Guerrilla Yardwork: The First-Time Home Owner’s Handbook now on Amazon.