A Lubbock girl, Addison Pickering, 9, will spend her summer making her dancing dreams come true with a lawnmower and a business plan.
Addison explained that she was accepted to dance along with several other members of her Lubbock dance group in the Holiday Spectacular, a televised parade at Disneyland. She will head to Disneyland to dance in November. While her parents handle the finances, she knew this venture was going to be expensive for her family.
So she decided to mow lawns to fundraise. Several weeks ago, Pickering launched a Facebook page called A Girl and her Mower. With the help of her dad, she is mowing lawns across Lubbock— all her clients have to do is send a message and name their price.
“I knew that we gotta get what we want by working hard, so I decided I wanted to mow lawns like my dad did when he was young,” Pickering said.
She explained that she remembered stories her dad told her about how he mowed lawns when he was younger to raise money for a trip to Six Flags. She wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Her dad, Jerrod Pickering, said that Addison’s mom typically does her hair and fixes her tutus for dance competitions, so mowing lawns gives him his own special way to be a part of his daughter’s dance world.
Mr. Pickering said his daughter’s new venture has been inspiring.
“It’s not the Bill Gates’ of the world who are asking her to do this, it’s ordinary people who are trying to make ends meet every month who probably have their own mower and weed eater and edger, and they are choosing to help a little 9-year-old girl,” Mr. Pickering said with a smile.
Prior to this venture, Addison said she had little lawn mowing experience, but now she operates the push mower by herself (under the watchful eye of her dad) and tackles lawns of any size.
“I watch my dad every now and then, I didn’t really pay attention to what he was doing but I watched,” she explained.
She admits that sometimes the mower is harder to push than she expected, but overall her strength from dancing has carried over to her yard work.
“Sometimes we have to stand on our toes [for dance] and so when we’re mowing I have to kind of push hard but it’s not very hard for me to do,” she said.
She welcomes anyone who wants help with their yards to message her project’s Facebook page.
Her father added that people have reached out already asking them to start a fundraising page so that people could donate to Addison. But as a family they decided they’d rather fundraise with old-fashioned yard work.
“There are a lot of things as a parent that make you proud, you think your kid is the best at everything and the cream of the crop and they can do no wrong,” Mr. Pickering said. “We were very proud of Addison for trying out and putting in the rehearsal time and to do the auditions we were very proud whenever she was accepted [to perform at Disneyland]. Then as we started to look at the cost we started getting nervous, and whenever she spoke up saying she wanted to mow lawns to raise some of that money–you can’t be more proud.”
Addison has learned many technical skills in the last few weeks, she explained that she does “front yards, we do backyards we do, mowing and edging, weed eating; we do a lot of different things.”
Out of all the lawn care options in Lubbock, why does she think people should enlist her services?
“I’m just the same as any other person. It’s just special if they pick me,” Pickering said.
