Posts Tagged ‘pulling weeds’
Spending Time
A zone of mental energy resonates when a jigsaw puzzler hits their stride and loses track of the world while reassembling an image, one piece at a time. I’m one of those who enjoy that mental resonation, yet I sometimes question the value of the outcome merely being a picture that will soon be disassembled and returned to a box and stored out of sight.
I recently discovered that I experience a similar mental energy reward by digging up weeds from the gravel portion of the driveway loop around the hay shed. In some ways, it provides a more powerful reward than jigsaw puzzling because the activity results are not then stored in a box on a shelf.
Every time I go past that weeded gravel and see how much better it looks, I enjoy a bonus reward from the previous effort. There is also a bonus brought on by time. The puzzle is never-ending because in no time at all, there will be new weeds available for pulling.
Actually, that image might make for a good challenge in a jigsaw puzzle.
On a rainy day when still in shock from an unanticipated dose of grief, losing myself in a repetitive routine task offers a welcome respite. It’s hard to tell if the body aches I experience at the end of the day come more from activity or sorrow.
When the heart hurts, a whole lot of the rest of us hurts, too.
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Hot Start
Hello October. Goodbye Twin Cities Marathon. Marathon officials canceled today’s races early this morning because the expected heat and humidity pushed the conditions to the extreme and dangerous “Black-Flag” status. Aye-yai-yai, that’s like living in a time when the warming of our planet is impacting everyday life.
On the way to the barn this morning, I noticed the recent rains we’ve received have invigorated lawn grass growth. I’m so happy to have electric lawnmowers that make end-of-season maintenance a non-issue. Mowing grass in October is not something that used to happen in the past in our region.
We have taken advantage of this late-season warmth by planting grass seeds along the driveway. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
While waiting for the seeds to germinate, I noticed the rain softened the gravel drive loop around the hay shed enough to make pulling weeds easy. It’s an activity the Asher can help with and not be a pest. He even bites and pulls at weeds as he aggressively digs.
It looks great, but progress is slow working by hand. If I was serious about cleaning up the whole loop, I’d be well-served by getting out the diesel tractor and using the back blade.
For now, I’ll put my attention toward mowing. If it rains again soon, I can return to weeding the gravel. It just looks so nice, I can’t help myself.
Here are a couple of other things that look really nice:
Freshly fallen pine needles are carpeting the trail along our north property line.
This morning’s sunrise was illuminating the colorful leaves in the trees around the labyrinth before it was high enough to reach the ground below.
It will be a scenic day to mow.
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Big Swing
The temperature took a big swing of over 30°(F) in one day and we went from a high heat advisory on Monday to cool and wet yesterday.
I decided to take advantage of the rainy weather and started pulling weeds. I soon found myself pulling thistle that was mixed with poison ivy. That was enough to get me to change my focus to a different area where vines are taking over. Both projects turned out to be more overwhelming than handwork can solve.
I’m going to need to bring out the brush cutter on the back of the diesel tractor to interrupt the unwelcome trends growing in these two areas. We seem to have arrived at the peak vine growing time of the year as they are showing up everywhere we turn and in greater density than either Cyndie or I recall noticing in the previous ten years.
It’s hard to know if we are making any headway in controlling the vines because previous years’ efforts seem meaningless under the current onslaught of multiple climbing species showing up far and wide.
Speaking of big swings, I snapped a photo of Cyndie trying to interrupt a budding dreadlock in Mix’s tail while the mare was gobbling her morning feed.
It speaks volumes that Mix was agreeable to the annoying activity going on behind her while she ate. The horses really are allowing themselves to receive more attention from us every day. It’s wonderfully rewarding.
It’s a big swing from how they were behaving when they first arrived, a little over a year ago now.
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Pushing Back
Cyndie put in a heroic effort yesterday to win back our river stone patio on the side of our house. The ground cover growth had overtaken the surface with such gusto that it looked like our property had been abandoned.
Our summer weather has been very friendly to growing plants this year, both the wanted and the unwanted.
I pulled in the driveway after work one day last week and came upon a curious row of garbage bags filled with plant remains. My first thought was, now what?
Earlier in the summer, after our visit from the regional DNR Forester who taught us about the importance of controlling the invasive garlic mustard, Cyndie did a super job of focussed eradication. He emphasized the requirement of bagging and discarding the plants that have been pulled from the ground, because if you leave them lay, they will simply put down roots and regenerate. So bag them, she did.
I was going to be shocked if this large new collection of bagged detritus lined up on our driveway was from a previously undiscovered patch of garlic mustard.
Upon my inquiry, Cyndie described thinking she was just going to pull out some wayward unwanted growth under the pine trees in our front yard. Turned out to be a massive woven web that went on and on and became a full-fledged landscaping project in its own right.
To be safe, based on what we learned about the garlic mustard, she decided to bag it, just in case.
Yesterday’s growth wasn’t so threatening, just prolific in an open area of river stones.
Luckily, the recent heavy rain (3-inches on Thursday) has softened the soil to ease the extraction of unwanted growth. Cyndie produced impressive results reclaiming our patio area in the high heat of a classic July day yesterday.
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Relative Something 