A Time For Everything

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Today is Labor Day and, growing up, that signaled the end of summer and the start of the school year. Isn't it tradition that, at least in elementary school, you write about what you did over the summer?

Well this is what I did...

Despite soooo many days of triple digit heat, and caring for mom, and keeping up with my day job, I spent quite a few hours cleaning up the yard. In part, to keep sane, to be honest. Especially as the days passed and mom required more care and attention which required me to be in her room...

I worked mostly while I was out with the little dogs anyway, which was 4-6 times a day in the beginning to ensure they didn't leave deposits on my flooring. Anywho...

First, I picked the pods off the sticker burrs to save all dog paws and my own feet from being wounded by these ugly suckers.

(Technically, they are sandbur seed pods, but we call them Sticker Burrs--and anyone who's experienced them will know exactly what you're talking about, lol.)

But as summer and the heat marched on, I started to just pull the whole plant from the ground. May as well, right? Considering how little grass is in the yard, they weren't hard to find or pull. I think I've mostly gotten them eradicated, although every now and again I find a small straggler or two. But they don't last longer than a blink.

Once the sticker burrs were done, I moved on to some sort of spider-like ground cover weed. Those, too, have been fairly easy to tug from the very dry earth that makes up most of my yard these days. There are also a lot of other random not-grass things growing (or already dead) that I've just plucked. Except the kudzu which grows as vines. Not sure how I'm going to get that out of the yard.

Then I got a wild hair to rake. Not only were there some leaves already, but our lawn guy is really just a lawn mower--so all the detritus from mowing gets left behind and what doesn't turn to natural mulch just sits, so when I've taken the dogs out I've also taken to wielding the rake.

As I'm out there letting the mind wander, it turns to "fixing up" the yard and what that might look like. I know it'll take money, which I don't have a lot of right now, but some ideas include:

• privacy fence
• a deck around the master bedroom (with a French door from said bedroom)
• non-grass landscaping, which could include:
• gravel (bye-bye kudzu)
  
• actual ground cover
• hedges / trees
• pond / water feature
• mulch
• any combo of the above

I do have a small section of grass I want to keep and nurture, but we live on a decent size piece of property and I don't want to have to water that much grass in future summers (or install a sprinkler system). Convincing DH to do any of these other than the privacy fence is going to be a challenge. We'll see how it goes.

How's your summer going?

Have a great week.

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!

I'm pretty tuckered out and stressed and very glad it's Friday.

On the other hand, I'm the fill-in speaker for my writers group tomorrow...yikes. I'm going to talk about the most common issues I correct while proof reading/copy editing. A subject I know and that other writers should find informative. I hope.

In other news, the de-weeding of the back yard is coming along. Slowly, very slowly. The dandelions seems to mostly be gone, so that's good. And I've deduced there are at least two kinds. Well, I'm sure there multiple varieties, actually, but I think my yard contains two. Along with some other dandelion-like weeds.

But since those don't seem to be growing much anymore--I'm now concentrating on the weed that grows stickers. It looks very much like crab grass, but it, of course, sprouts those blasted stickers. Mostly I try to pull out the whole base of the plant, including the roots. But sometimes I just have to resort to plucking the sticker pods so they don't dry out, fall off and go to seed and infest my poor yard with even more of themselves...

And last for today is my new fan love----the BBC's SHERLOCK. The show is smart and funny and filled with subtext to the nth degree and features the delightful and delicious Benedict Cumberbatch!



Anyone else watching Sherlock? What do you think??

Okay, so I don't have a farm. But it's been a while since I mentioned my yard. I've been doing a lot of weeding lately. Unfortunately, there are sooooo many weeds, it's hard to tell that I am pulling anything, until I started in on this patch. This is after day one:



And this is after day two:



I have many many more patches to go...but at ten to thirty minutes a day I'm actually doing pretty well. I might have them all pulled by next spring. Then I can start on the dandelions.

The Chinese wisteria is growing like a weed. It likes the heat apparently. The azaleas, on the other hand, aren't doing very well at all. I've added watering cycles so the timer, but I don't know if they're gonna make it.

Wisteria...


Azalea...


My mini-roses are blooming again too...that's a three-tiered planter. The yellow are on the bottom, the pink on the top. The middle one is taking a break I guess.



Last but not least, my corner flower bed. The plants themselves are green and growing, but no blooms for a while. One of the Sweet Williams just blossomed, but that's the only one.


Are you a green thumb?

PS--Sorry for the various picture qualities. Some were taken in the morning, others in the evening, so the light variations differ....