(Reeaaally not looking for terrible or horrifying things here. Want happy or cool stories! And I'll start.)

My job currently has me going into random people's back yards. I see immaculately groomed lawns, overgrown lawns, perfect shrubs, imperfect shrubs. I see weeds up to my hips, I see junk, kid toys, dog toys, real grass, astroturf, basically everything.

But today, I think I accidentally kind of walked into a modern fairy tale setting. Not a beautiful Disney type of fairy tale. More of an urban fantasy sort of thing--like if Abandoned Porn did gardens.

So, the place was a small suburban yard. House was probably built in the 70s, and has been neglected as of late. I had an impression of faded yellow siding, discolored, peeling.

The front yard had an old chain link fence, and was kind of overgrown with some gnomes and such, but that part didn't really register on me too much as I'd seen places similar to it from the front with overgrown plants and junk, and it usually just got worse in the back. On most homes, the front is the nicest part, and everything hidden in back is not so nice.

I go up to the door and ring the bell. An older man with hearing loss answered the door and I eventually got permission to go in back after pantomiming why I was there and what I was going to do. (I wasn't smart enough to get my phone out and type in it...next time, I guess, hah.)

So I tramp around into the back past a few cars that probably don't work, 90s era stuff, and one truck that might have been 70s or 80s.

And at first, all I see is weeds. Weeds, sticks, a gnarled tree that got knocked down in some storm and was still laying there, a wrought iron table that it'd landed on bent and deformed underneath it.

There seemed to be some paths through it all, but still, I was not able to easily move about, and I'm not a large person. My progression into the yard was: Crunch crunch, crack, OW, crunch, brush, rustle.

However...as I worked my way further into the back yard, I began to realize that even though there were clear signs of neglect, this yard wasn't actually ugly. Yeah, it was totally overgrown. Yeah, it needed considerable yard work done to get the old branches and that dead tree out.

But it was also beautiful.

And I realized that, once upon a time, someone with a creative touch had really, really loved this yard.

There were little stonework paths going everywhere to little places that had once been important, lost underneath the overgrown weeds and leaves underneath my feet. Not cheap fake stone or brick crap that someone artistically lacking picked from a catalogue or whatever, I actually kicked some of the leaves aside to see what was underneath, and found that it was nice stonework, the really well-planned kind with the type of artistry you only get if the homeowner themselves has a creative touch. (Basically, you can't buy that type of art, especially not for the tiny back yard of a 70s-built suburbia house.)

There was a gazebo with stone benches, there was a well (probably decorative, but not made cheaply). There was a bit of "cottage chic" stuff about--but it wasn't new, and the yard had grown around it. Tumbled some of it over artistically, tin watering cans lost in stalks of grass, giving it an air of veracity that it might not have started with.

I saw what seemed to be an old grindstone, for sharpening knives, covered in ivy and webs. It looked straight out of Skyrim...if a bit smaller than I expected. Speaking of webs, those were everywhere in the ivy, covering it and other plants thickly, catching detritus from spring like dead flowers and petals.

There were some weeds, but (astonishingly since I'd just tramped through yards full of weeds a few hours prior) they were scarce. The original plants were overgrown but had NOT been pushed out by weeds like I usually see. I'm not gardener enough to know how this even happened...I can only figure the original gardener was very clever at picking their plants to begin with, and chose ones that would strangle any weeds, instead of being strangled by them.

The entire back yard was overgrown, though. Just with those nice garden plants instead of weeds. There was ivy spilling everywhere, there were low-lying evergreen bushes creeping out of old stone planters.

I saw some dry rose thorns in the corner by the AC unit where I was doing my work, and thought, "I'm glad they didn't plant those roses where I am working...but they look pretty dead from neglect and too much shade".

My job had me moving about the entire yard, and I ended up approaching the AC unit from the other side--and saw a single dry rose bloom jutting straight up next to that AC unit. I hadn't been able to see it from the other side, the overgrowth was too thick, but approaching it from the gazebo, there it was. It was half-dead, probably from the rose bush being in total shade, or being choked out by all the ivy. But it was there. One bloom, pale pink and dying, sticking straight up like it was saying, "I'm still here!"

That flower, jutting up in the most inhospitable part of the yard, in this ruined garden that probably only I had set foot in recently, made me take a second look around, and I realized I was in the perfect setting for a modern "Secret Garden", or a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

I thought about it a bit, wondered how everything had come to be in this state, and concluded that whoever had loved that garden had probably become disabled, or had passed on, and the people still living in the house had no ability or desire to go back there and start to clean things up and make it bloom anew.

And I found that sad, because this wasn't a regular bit of landscaping. So much work had gone into it at one point that now, probably at least 5 years later if not 10, I could STILL see the beauty it'd once had, shining through all the dead plants and spiderwebs and fallen objects on the ground. What would the original gardener have thought, to see it neglected like this?

The whole situation sticks with me. An interesting experience, and now a memory I'm grateful to have.

Like, here I am, in this little random back yard with a beautiful abandoned garden that nobody goes into and nobody has seen recently but me.

I think I have to write a story about it someday--a story better than this post. But I'm hoping a post will share a little bit of what I saw for now.

(I don't have a photo because the guy at the front door was near-deaf and could hardly understand why I needed to go back there--didn't want to take advantage of him allowing me back there in the first place by taking photos and putting them online. He deserves privacy. But I might very well write a retelling of some fairy tale, with the deaf guy answering the door...and what might happen when you go in back and get pricked by that rose next to the AC!)

Anyway. What are some things that you guys have come across, if your job takes you onto people's property for a living?

I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It's such a small specific thing, one I'd never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.

What are your small, "random" or "junk drawer" type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?

It's been a week since I posted the last one...right?

I'm afraid I haven't been very frugal this week. Got some things mildly on sale, but still too much, so I don't think they count and won't post them.

I know someone would immediately jump in with water if I didn't caveat that, haha. Tap water is the most frugal drink, yes I know, but for me plain ol' water more of a basic survival thing. And I like to be happy too, not stuck permanently in survival mode, even if I'm also being frugal.

So.

One of my "vices", if you can call it that, is fancy tea.

I'm American and we're not really a tea-drinking culture, so I was taken by surprise when I got into drinking tea and learned you can get surprisingly nice quality loose leaf tea online that blows grocery store tea bags out of the water, and it's not a terribly expensive habit. Grocery store tea in tea bags is basically 'tea dust' left over from processing better teas, and basically almost any loose leaf tea is a better quality than bagged tea dust, so you don't have to break the bank to see immediate improvement in your tea quality.

And that surprised the heck out of me!

I eventually realized that's because tea is a dry good and cheap to ship--it's light, dry, packs small, ships well. Much easier to get your hands on than, say, alcohol or liquid drinks that are heavy or distributed in glass bottles.

So yeah. It's not as frugal as water, but I found I can usually still have some nice tea around even if I'm pinching every penny, and it can help tide me through tough spots without the downsides of other vices (like drinking, smoking, etc.)

What are your guys' favorite frugal drinks?

I was just thinking in the back of my head about how cheap LEDs have made types of lighting that would've cost way too much (both to install, and in electricity usage) no longer stupidly expensive.

For example, I noticed on Amazon some cheap furniture that has LEDs/power outlets sort of integrated right into them. Looks pretty cyberpunk-ish to my eyes. And I know years ago that sort of thing would've been marked up to high heavens.

Fancy lighting in general has changed drastically in price/design.

So...what are some things, due to changes in demand or changes in tech or changes in anything...that would've been really expensive back in the day, but which no longer seem to be, making them more frugal than they used to be?

Just curious what you guys have been able to score recently.

I don't have anything really good to share, been spending too much. Let me live vicariously (and frugally!) through you!