I am become death, destroyer of worlds...
... at least as far as a bunch of weeds are concerned. Or, so I hope/aspire, anyway.
See, last year, in the chaos that was pre-sabbatical summer, Echo and I finally completed our great deck-replacement project. (Those of you who read her LJ may remember this mighty undertaking.) It was way more work than we wanted, but it came out beautifully. Dry-laid flagstone slabs, with variegated gravel between. Nice, southwestern desert colors that complement the house nicely and so on. We were pretty proud. Of course, we finished it essentially as we were walking out of the house and the tenants (cursed be their names unto the end of time) were moving in, so we never got to enjoy it.
Flash forward to late July '09 and our triumphant/exhausted return to the land of sunshine and very little rain. Lo and behold, but a bunch of hardy desert plants (a.k.a. WEEDS) had grown up out of our beautiful new patio.
...
WTF?
See, we had actually considered this possibility. The recommended design here is a 6-inch deep pit, lined with weed fabric, 2 inches of gravel, 2 inches of sand, more weed fabric, then flagstone, and fill the interstices with gravel. You wouldn't think that anything would grow in there, would you? But no, there they are -- happy as clams in clover, sprouting up and seeding all over our patio.
Little gray-green alien bastards.
So, today with the poisons. Liberal application of industrial strength Roundup. (No, I have no mercy.) Next week: flame.
One of the bits that was really hard to adjust to here was weeding with flame throwers. A side-effect of living in the DESERT is that a lot of landscaping is done with gravel, sand, rock, etc. A bunch of hardscape, with carefully placed plants on water-drip life support in between. But that means that anything that can actually grow in the hardscape is probably a "do not hug me" desert plant of some variety. (I.e., weed.) So the common tactic here is to burn it all down to the ground -- flame-throwers attached to the kinds of propane tanks you use for grills. It is odd and disturbing, in some ways, but makes perfect sense. (Though I am still a bit leery and somewhat surprised that nobody has set the Northeast Heights on fire while gardening yet. To my knowledge, anyway.)
My mom generously donated her flame thrower to the cause, so as soon as Roundup has had a chance to do its biochemical magic, I intend to go get medieval on their fronds. Or, perhaps, a biblical reference would be more appropriate and more vengeful...
fingers crossed that that gets rid of them. For this season, anyway. Why can't the biodiversity stay nicely contained in the rain forests, rather than growing up in our patio?
See, last year, in the chaos that was pre-sabbatical summer, Echo and I finally completed our great deck-replacement project. (Those of you who read her LJ may remember this mighty undertaking.) It was way more work than we wanted, but it came out beautifully. Dry-laid flagstone slabs, with variegated gravel between. Nice, southwestern desert colors that complement the house nicely and so on. We were pretty proud. Of course, we finished it essentially as we were walking out of the house and the tenants (cursed be their names unto the end of time) were moving in, so we never got to enjoy it.
Flash forward to late July '09 and our triumphant/exhausted return to the land of sunshine and very little rain. Lo and behold, but a bunch of hardy desert plants (a.k.a. WEEDS) had grown up out of our beautiful new patio.
...
WTF?
See, we had actually considered this possibility. The recommended design here is a 6-inch deep pit, lined with weed fabric, 2 inches of gravel, 2 inches of sand, more weed fabric, then flagstone, and fill the interstices with gravel. You wouldn't think that anything would grow in there, would you? But no, there they are -- happy as clams in clover, sprouting up and seeding all over our patio.
Little gray-green alien bastards.
So, today with the poisons. Liberal application of industrial strength Roundup. (No, I have no mercy.) Next week: flame.
One of the bits that was really hard to adjust to here was weeding with flame throwers. A side-effect of living in the DESERT is that a lot of landscaping is done with gravel, sand, rock, etc. A bunch of hardscape, with carefully placed plants on water-drip life support in between. But that means that anything that can actually grow in the hardscape is probably a "do not hug me" desert plant of some variety. (I.e., weed.) So the common tactic here is to burn it all down to the ground -- flame-throwers attached to the kinds of propane tanks you use for grills. It is odd and disturbing, in some ways, but makes perfect sense. (Though I am still a bit leery and somewhat surprised that nobody has set the Northeast Heights on fire while gardening yet. To my knowledge, anyway.)
My mom generously donated her flame thrower to the cause, so as soon as Roundup has had a chance to do its biochemical magic, I intend to go get medieval on their fronds. Or, perhaps, a biblical reference would be more appropriate and more vengeful...
fingers crossed that that gets rid of them. For this season, anyway. Why can't the biodiversity stay nicely contained in the rain forests, rather than growing up in our patio?