For anybody who wonders why I live here … … that’s 12 feet from my back door. Of course, sometimes the vegetation does get carried away. Between morning glory, ivy, alder saplings, and the omnipresent blackberry vines, you can almost watch the grow-y things growing. Summer may not be sunny, but it’s one long struggle to keep plants from taking over plants. This is what that big fern in the right foreground looked like 10 minutes before I took the above shot, being strangled and consumed by morning glory tendrils: Beautiful, cannibalistic vegetation. We have everything a rain forest has.…
6 CommentsCategory: Gardening heaven forbid
Oh, that felt gooooooood. After a quick hop online yesterday morning to approve a few blog comments awaiting moderation, I shut down the computer and spent my Sunday in the pleasant combination of relaxing and being productive. —– All that relaxing took discipline at first. It still shocks me, how seductive the computer is. Never mind the (apparently even more powerful) lure of checking FB likes or seeing how friends are responding to a new Instagram post. Merely knowing that useful information awaits at a click is addictive enough. My task for the last few days has been cleaning up…
1 CommentIt’s a good idea to record the serial numbers of your guns in case they’re stolen. One cop shop thinks it’s a good idea for you to store that number in their database. Hahaha. How very droll. (Via Codrea) Before Marriott let 500 million guests’ records slip away, they had a string of other breaches. Their cyber-security team was even hit with malware. They say no man is a hero to his valet. The same probably holds true with presidents and their Secret Service agents. Bush the First may have been a typically awful leader, but you never hear a…
11 CommentsFrom yesterday: There’s something about watching a healthy young guy do sweaty, muscle-taxing “man’s work.” After he’d chopped up three designated planting areas for me. The Wandering Monk and I talked a while. We unfortunately agreed that much of the upcoming crop of young men — with their declining testosterone, estrogen-mimicking soy-and-plastic diets, and cultural castration — will be incapable of doing this sort of work. And that will be a loss both to them and to the women of their generation. To society, as well. Of course, my generation wasn’t fond of sweaty manual labor, either, and as a…
13 CommentsHundreds and hundreds of fall bulbs. I’m not a gardener. And landscaping (mostly consisting of gravel and native plants to replace the lawn) wasn’t supposed to begin until next year. Then Neighbor J. went to Costco and went crazy. Insanity must have been contagious because I ended up committing to buy about 1/3 of the billions and billions of mega-pack bulbs she purchased. I’m not ready for this. The dirt — which was going to be pickaxed, then artfully heaped next summer — isn’t ready for this. I’m going to be digging through grass with my itty-bitty little trowel to…
10 CommentsThe kid didn’t show. The 13-1/2-year-old boy whose father said he’d be glad to help with some shovel-and-wheelbarrow work is nowhere to be found — though he lives next door. I don’t think Dad forgot to tell him about the potential gig; Dad’s a hyper-responsible mill supervisor and a very involved, but traditional father. He’s eager for his oldest boy to take responsibility. As soon as I knew it would come to having to chase the kid down, I knew it wasn’t worth chasing him down. Maybe next year. —– Now I have this large area, about 30 x 30,…
16 Comments