Category Archives: weeds

spring, weeds

Noxious or Not

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I’ve decided that I need to take more blogging breaks. Why you might ask? Because more people follow this blog when I don’t write than when I do write. I’m not sure what that means. In the immortal words of Arnold in Terminator 3 – I’m back.

I’ve been tied up with real life for the last week as I went through a change of operating system on the servers here while herding cats. No, not literally, but figuratively, as I worked to get the members of the board in sync for a board meeting next Monday. It always makes me think of herding cats when you try getting a group of people to agree on a day and time to hold a board meeting.

In other niceties, the weather is finally heading towards full-on spring here in the flatlands. That means that it is time to start planting some of the early cool ground tolerant things. Of course the weeds are already in fine fettle, attempting to conquer the universe one root at a time. There has to be a good reason that weeds seem to have a head start on all the other plants – otherwise they wouldn’t be called weeds!

All of which is a round about way to sneak up on the subject for tonight: one man’s weed is another man’s flower. I remember as a kid when we lived for a few years in Nebraska and then returned to Colorado. I was puzzled that the same plant that was so abundant as to be considered a pest in Nebraska was rare enough in Colorado to be the state flower. It was my introduction to the idea that people can have quite different value judgments of the same objective reality depending on local conditions.

I leave you with this question: Is there any reality where noxious weeds like Russian Thistle are considered rare and beautiful plants? Because if there is, I can introduce you to nirvana without any effort. At least until the weed police come and cart me away for growing a proscribed weed.

At least Russian Thistle leads to tumble weeds in the fall. Unlike Canadian Thistle that just remains troubling and noxious all year round.

trees, weeds

What I Did Today

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Today I decided to finish cleaning up all the volunteer growth in the back yard. With all the rain and cool weather earlier in the year, volunteer elms and sumac and weeds went wild. At the start it looked like this:

 
  
After a miserable day in the 100 degree heat, things began to look more presentable. Like this:
 
  
  
Now all that is left for tomorrow is chopping all the trees and limbs up and carrying it out to the alley to be hauled away. Sometime this fall it will be time to pull all the creeping vine and then rake all the pine needles. At that point it will be clean for another year (and we’ll be able to see the rock under the pines for a brief while).

I didn’t have to work alone today. Molly the wonder dog thought it was a good time to explore the forbidden side of the yard with me. (Molly is kept on the other side of the back yard and only rarely gets to run wild on this side.)
 
  
You can tell by her lolling tongue that it was warm. I kept refilling her water dish with cold water, so she had no interest in going back into the house. She wanted to explore worse than she wanted to be cool.

I did find some interesting things as I was bushwhacking. For example, the volunteer sumac was fruiting. (Looks a lot like bunches of grapes, doesn’t it?)
 

There were also some interesting sentimental things to be found in the trees as well. Way back when they were young, the Son and his cousin used to play in the pine trees, using cord to tie things in the trees, etc. Now all these years later, some of the cords are working free. I found this on the ground under the pine in the corner:
 
It’s mate is still tied to a branch up in the tree.

I’m tired and sore, so its time to go shower and then relax. So what did you do today?
garden, oddness, weeds

Weeds, Weeds, Weeds Everywhere

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Today after therapy for XXX, I went over to chop, pull, hoe, stare at, rant at, and finally come to an uneasy coexistence with all the weeds in the garden. Parts of the garden were still too wet from Sunday’s downpour to even attempt to enter. But the other side was dry enough so I spent about 6 hours weeding. I think I need a motto like the U.S. Postal Service: neither heat nor weeds above my head will keep me from my appointed hoeing. What do you think?

Leaving the weeds behind, a couple of odd things.

Do you ever look in your spam folder to see what is being sent to you? I do from time to time because I run my own mail servers and filter spam rather aggressively, so it behooves me to make sure I’m not throwing away “real” mail. Spam in general is not overly interesting, but I find the types of spam being sent seems to cycle from time to time.

Today when I looked on the server at the collected spam of the last week, I was astonished to note that there wasn’t a single sexually oriented message. No penis extender ads, no ads for fake Viagra, no young nubile girls desiring me to call them for cybersex. None. Nada. it must really be a bad economy when the sex related spammers slack off.

On the other hand, the number of ads for ersatz debit cards that work just like a credit card seem to be rising fast. So too are the work at home scams.  And the refinance shills are working the internet mails as well.

One surprising spam was one I haven’t seem before. It was offering home cleaning services. I have to wonder how many people would invite unknown people to their abode to clean on the basis of a spam email. I have my doubts that there is any cleaning service behind the email – I suspect it is simply a way to collect valid email addresses cross matched with a physical address. Perhaps a targeted list of home owners by region?

Second odd thing.

Tonight three different people called and left messages about mayor business after 7pm. They all three obviously didn’t expect to talk to me (they assumed I’d be in the normal Tueday night council meeting, but there wasn’t one this week) and in that they were not disappointed since I was fixing supper when they called. But the odd part is that all three said they had a meeting and would be tied up until 9:30pm and for me to give them a call after 9:30. It is going to be interesting to see what meeting they were at and why it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Hope it is interesting.

Time to go get cleaned up so I can mosey down to the radio station in the morning. After that, I have a speaking engagement for lunch with the Rotary club. Since they are changing officers and holding the meeting as a pool party, I’m wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt. That way if there is any truth to the rumor of plans to throw the mayor in the pool, I’ll be prepared. {*grin*}