A Time For Everything

Okay, okay, so this post isn't going to be as deep as the title suggests, but there is an analogy...

If you've read this here blog for any length of time, you'll know I talk a lot about my yard. It's been a while, so I thought I'd mention it. But in the interest of not boring you, I thought I'd make some sort of point. Yeah, you're bored already, aren't you?

I used to have a really nice back yard. There was a lot of real grass and it covered most of the area referred to as the lawn. But through too much neglect, it is now more weeds than grass. I'd really like to have grass again. So I've been working, albeit slowly, to fix it. You'd probably shake your head if you came and inspected it up close a personal, but surprisingly, while it's not actually looking well, I think the process is coming along nicely.


Spring 2013 I decided to work on just the dandelions. We had a lot of them. So each morning and evening and during the days on the weekends, I would pick the heads off. No, I didn't actually remove the plant itself. As you can imagine, that was tedious process. For the rest of spring, summer, and fall, I just kept up with the mowing and weed whacking.

So spring 2014, back to the dandelions. And while I hadn't removed any plants, re-infestation was kept to a minimum. Despite preferring to stay green, I thought that a bit of chemical help was in order, so in mid-May, I weed-and-feeded the yard. Got those dandelions where they lived! Of course it took some time for them to wither up and die, but wither-up-and-die they did. In the mean time, it was onto the next issue. Sticker burrs.

I hunted them, pulling the whole plant, roots and all, when I could, pulling off just the seed pods when I couldn't. Two months later and the number of sticker plants dwindled. Time for the next round of weed-and-feed and time to find a new enemy.

Now I'm pulling up these small plants--I don't even know what the are. They have a central root system and then grow a bunch of arm-like tendrils. It turns out there are several varieties of these. So I've criss-crossed my yard over and over, puling these out even when they look dead (just in case they're only hibernating), still finding pockets of sticker burrs here and there as I go. I see the progress even if the project as a whole looks like a war zone.


Of course, the yard was mowed this weekend, so not much weed-picking going on until they start to grow out a bit.


The point I started out wanting to make is just how amazing and interesting the cycle of growing things is. As the dandelions died off, a different weed took the spotlight. As summer progressed and things died off due to heat and lack of water (I only water my trees), more new things are coming into view. It's really been quite interesting and I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the cycle back into spring.

As the title of this blog says...a time for everything!