Author: cdwan

And it’s all due to Panda Golf.

Gah! Many happenings.

I broke my laptop

I captured the little lettuce eating bastard on flash memory this afternoon. He’s cute and very quick…and has an insatiable appetite for my tender young lettuce. Here are the pictures. Check out my rhubarb though!

Saw “Kill Bill 2.” Whatever. I hold to my prior thoughts: It’s a decent pair of movies, but I get tired of watching Tarentino show off.

I’ve been studying my lawn lately.

No seriously, hear me out. My lawn is interesting.

See, I’ve got five major species vying for dominance of the dirt: There’s the grass, which I want to encourage, and then there are the clover, the creeping charlie, the dandelions (damn them!), and these ugly ass broadleaf plants. They require very different methodologies to control.

Clover and creeping charlie are spreading vines which send down roots when a node touches the ground. They grow incredibly fast and cannot be removed by tearing them out. This is primarily because of the fact that they seem to be able to regenerate from any scrap of tissue left anywhere near the ground. I’m told that the most popular way to eradicate either is to go nuclear with chemicals (use 10% or stronger vinegar if you want to be all granola and unshaved about it) early in the spring. This has the side effect of killing ALL the plants in the treated area, but you can then reseed with the ground cover of your choice.

More reliable, but harder, is to modify the environment such that the grass will legitimately outcompete the vines. Grass has dense, spreading roots and will tend to win on well fertilized, decently loose soil. The vines have puny roots and are basically scavengers. If the soil is hard packed or not very rich in nitrogen, the vines will win. So, I’ve been fertilizing (compost and blood meal), aerating (pointy stick), and letting the grass go a little longer so that it shades the clover and kicks its ass.

Dandelions and broadleaves are a totally different story. You gotta dig them out. The most effective method I’ve found is to insert a trowel vertically next to the center of the plant, and loosen the soil by wiggling it. Then the plant pops right out with a gentle pull. This has a pleasant side effect of aerating (de compacting) the soil as you go.

Never, ever, put weeds in your compost. It’s just dumb. You get lots and lots of new weeds.

I have no idea how to get rid of crabgrass. The folk remedy is to dig it out, including about a foot of soil on any side of the plant, and then burn it on concrete, on a day when the wind is blowing away from your property.

‘Bout time. We have an offer on the house. That, and I spent the entire afternoon being chatted up by (in something like this order) a real estate agent, a potential employer, and another potential employer. We’re to the point in this puzzle where we just need to fix some of the parameters and see if the others can be made to fit.

In short: W00t. I’m cooking out of the Moosewood cookbook tonight, unless I can catch the rabbit I saw in the garden as I was coming home. If I get my hands on him, I’m eatin’ ‘im. He started it.

This is a pretty accurate review of Van Helsing. Sometimes ‘ole FC goes a little over the top, but this time he’s dead on.

The owners of the house in RI have accepted an offer, and that offer was not ours. The low-down is that the money was competitive, but we conditioned it on the selling of our current house. Seemingly, someone else did not impose such a condition. There you go. Just another example of the man keepin’ you down.