Hans:
I know exactly what you mean.
I grew up in a house that sat on an acre - about half an acre in front and the same in back.
As soon as my little brother and I were old enough to push a mower, we got stuck with yard duty. Half an acre is a lot when you're eleven years old, and the mower is the balkiest-to-start, non-self-propelled mower you ever saw. And of course, there was Georgia heat and humidity to deal with....
My dad was very meticulous about having the drive and the walkway edged as well (before there were weed-whackers to make the job easier), and he thought nothing of telling us on Sunday (when we were worn out from Saturday's mowing) that he wanted some shrubs moved from here to there. He was also damn generous about lending us to relatives who needed yard work done.
As soon as we left home, he started going through riding mowers until he worked his way up to the biggest garden tractor Sears made. He edges nothing; if the mower deck can't get close to something, that's just too bad.
The result of all this? I hate yard work worse than I hate anything else on this planet. The size of the yard I care for now is thirty feet by thirty, and it's way more than I want to deal with.