stubbed toes and mud pies

[flowerbug]

beautiful morning for getting caught up on some weeding of pathways and gravel areas, in between rocks, bricks, pavers, etc. better to get them when they are just starting out as then i have a chance of getting the weed removed without having to actually move the rocks, etc. to get at the roots of the matter.

got more done in a few hours than i have in the past week.

 

[flowerbug]

and this afternoon since i could get back outside again i made more progress on getting my last bean garden weeded so perhaps i can get it planted this week depending upon what the weather and other things are up to...

 

[flowerbug]

i was hoping to get out mowing by now but the dew is heavy on the grass and i'm in no hurry. if i have to take a few breaks to cool off then that's just how it goes... so until then i'm killing time doing nothing and enjoying it. i turned off the AC because my feet were so cold and now the sun is warming them back up. the only thing that would make this moment even better would be breakfast appearing before me - but i suspect i'll have a better chance of that happening if'n i get my butt up and go get it.

 

[flowerbug]

at last the beekeeping people removed their carpeting and metal barrel from our property so i can get that area taken care of and i won't have to worry about disturbing the hives. they did put about a dozen hives in another area that doesn't block access to the back part of our lot.

 

[flowerbug]

yesterday when mowing noticed how many weeds were in the large place i call The Flood Plain that should have been noticed and removed some time ago, but Mom has been busy and so have i... she did say some time ago that she weeded this area and that also meant I would not spend much time looking at it myself.

so this morning i got out there and went through the whole thing and got the weeds removed

two and a half hours for 1,921.14 sq ft not all completely done, but in much better shape now.

key aspects to not having too many weeds? it's mostly crushed rinsed limestone over some old carpeting. the few spots where there are plants those are bushes which do an ok job at not letting too many weeds get going (but some thistles will easily colonize along them if given the chance - almost all of what i weeded today were those thistles). proper control of the uplands and only one edge where the grassy area next to it is not well defended (it used to be when we had chives growing along there but Mom didn't like them and mowed them all down and now the grasses are invading that edge).

the large garden to the west of it needs weeding soon, but i'm probably not going to get to that for a week or two yet.

i hear thunder and we're about to get rained on. The Flood Plain will likely get used again today by the looks of things...

 

[flowerbug]

i went to sleep last night watching many fireflies out back. so beautiful. they were lighting up the trees and field it was like lightning.

 

[flowerbug]

sunny and nice morning out there. wish my body could go some more hours. weeding and progress happened, sunshine absorbed, birdies listened to.

we have a new toy for chopping stuff down, an electric motor that we can put other things on. it came with the string trimmer attachment but we have enough stuff going on that involves brush and i don't want to pick bits of plastic string out of the yard any more (a long time ago we had a large string trimmer on wheels that was used to mow but that didn't survive long, and we also had some other trimmers that had cords that also didn't last very long) so we also have a brush trimmer blade that i put on there.

very tempted to go out and do some test chops at some thistles in the road to the north or the field out back but i'm tired enough that's probably not a great idea...

 

[flowerbug]

raining cats and dogs here, this line of this storm is very narrow but it's right on us and has been for a while.

also had a very close strike with lightning that surprised me, usually i have the computer shut down if it gets thunder and lightning. so this power backup and surge protector unit got a test i didn't mean for it to ever have...

 

[Marie2020]

yesterday when mowing noticed how many weeds were in the large place i call The Flood Plain that should have been noticed and removed some time ago, but Mom has been busy and so have i... she did say some time ago that she weeded this area and that also meant I would not spend much time looking at it myself.

so this morning i got out there and went through the whole thing and got the weeds removed

two and a half hours for 1,921.14 sq ft not all completely done, but in much better shape now.

key aspects to not having too many weeds? it's mostly crushed rinsed limestone over some old carpeting. the few spots where there are plants those are bushes which do an ok job at not letting too many weeds get going (but some thistles will easily colonize along them if given the chance - almost all of what i weeded today were those thistles). proper control of the uplands and only one edge where the grassy area next to it is not well defended (it used to be when we had chives growing along there but Mom didn't like them and mowed them all down and now the grasses are invading that edge).

the large garden to the west of it needs weeding soon, but i'm probably not going to get to that for a week or two yet.

i hear thunder and we're about to get rained on. The Flood Plain will likely get used again today by the looks of things...

I love chives. That's so sad

 

[flowerbug]

I love chives. That's so sad

it is, the bees always loved those flowers and it wasn't hard to maintain, it will now cost me a lot more time and effort to deal with that edge.

the upside though is that i won't ever have to deal with trying to remove it as the smell of chive roots is one of those things that makes me rather nauseated... i love onions and have no trouble at all with green onion harvest or eating - there's some specific chemical(s) that chives give off (probably the sulfur related compounds but i see no list of them) that my body doesn't like at all.

this is what that edge used to look like

now it is grasses going into the gravel...

as for gardening and not being able to grow plants easily chives are one of those plants that are not easy to remove and they can also spread pretty easy via the seeds and also by the plants dividing as they grow. i've removed many patches of them through the years, this was the largest patch of them i'd had to deal with

all that green to the right of this garden were chives and that pile is also all chives - i got rid of them by stacking those pieces up and letting them dry out and fall apart and just kept moving them if they tried to regrow and also i buried a lot of them. they were started in that location because Mom wanted to grow sunflowers but the chipmunks were eating them and also the deer and rabbits would eat the plants, so the chives were scattered along that row of sunflower plants and then of course the seeds from the flowers got growing and... it just got way out of control. the stench of those when digging them up was so bad i would not want to ever do that again, but i never had a problem from mowing the plants - the smell of the tops has never been a problem and i've eaten chives, onions, garlic chives, leeks, green onions and bunching onions, shallots, etc. without ever having them bother me - we eat a lot of onions and garlic, almost every dish we cook has onions in it.

sometime i would like to figure out what the specific chemicals are that the roots are giving off that makes me want to upchuck...

oh, but they do make a nice border planting as here is another incarnation of that same garden from years before that

as for an interesting fact about chives is that they are the only allium that is considered native to both the old and new world continents.

as for how long they've been around the alliums may have existed 30something million years ago (whereas modern humans have only been around a few hundred thousand years and most humanoid species have only been around maybe four or five million years)