SiouzQ.
8-2-22, 11:07am
with WEEDS! OMG! Never have I seen such a green variety of abundance here...
We are having an excellent monsoon season here. It started early in June for a few weeks, then subsided for two weeks in which things started to dry out again, and now we're back to almost daily rains. It's cooled off a little bit, but it is much more humid here than I am used to. Our large yard is a lush jungle and I cannot even hope to keep up with it. I started going out at 6am if I happen to wake up early to pull weeds while it's somewhat cooler out and the ground is soft.
Such an amazing variety of native plants and weeds; some have pretty flowers like the Desert Mallow, the Desert 4 O'Clock, and the New Mexican Sunflower, so I leave them to bloom in various spots in the garden. It is a beautiful, slightly chaotic mess. Others are terrible scourges, like Goatheads, which hug the ground and make these little rock hard Devil's-Head looking seed pods with lethal spikes that get tracked inside on the soles of shoes. To accidently step on one barefoot elicits a string of expletives. The ragweed is almost three tall and I simply cannot keep up with it; our yard is too big! I've been buying bags of mulch to try to keep the weeds in the pathways down, but I would need three large dump trucks of shredded bark to make a dent in the rest of the yard.
On the flip side, it is really nice to be able to take a shower every single day, and do lots of laundry without fear of using up too much precious water. Our 1500 gallon rainwater holding tank is almost perpetually full, and we rarely need to pump water from our well to fill it up.
I just saw that New Mexico tax payers are getting one more $250 tax refund check this summer, so I'm going to take that money and finally buy a weed-wacker. There is just NO WAY to keep trying to weed by hand. I already filled up the pickup truck bed with weeds and brush to take to the town brush pile. I have two more giant piles to cart away before I even get to pruning the salt brush...
We are having an excellent monsoon season here. It started early in June for a few weeks, then subsided for two weeks in which things started to dry out again, and now we're back to almost daily rains. It's cooled off a little bit, but it is much more humid here than I am used to. Our large yard is a lush jungle and I cannot even hope to keep up with it. I started going out at 6am if I happen to wake up early to pull weeds while it's somewhat cooler out and the ground is soft.
Such an amazing variety of native plants and weeds; some have pretty flowers like the Desert Mallow, the Desert 4 O'Clock, and the New Mexican Sunflower, so I leave them to bloom in various spots in the garden. It is a beautiful, slightly chaotic mess. Others are terrible scourges, like Goatheads, which hug the ground and make these little rock hard Devil's-Head looking seed pods with lethal spikes that get tracked inside on the soles of shoes. To accidently step on one barefoot elicits a string of expletives. The ragweed is almost three tall and I simply cannot keep up with it; our yard is too big! I've been buying bags of mulch to try to keep the weeds in the pathways down, but I would need three large dump trucks of shredded bark to make a dent in the rest of the yard.
On the flip side, it is really nice to be able to take a shower every single day, and do lots of laundry without fear of using up too much precious water. Our 1500 gallon rainwater holding tank is almost perpetually full, and we rarely need to pump water from our well to fill it up.
I just saw that New Mexico tax payers are getting one more $250 tax refund check this summer, so I'm going to take that money and finally buy a weed-wacker. There is just NO WAY to keep trying to weed by hand. I already filled up the pickup truck bed with weeds and brush to take to the town brush pile. I have two more giant piles to cart away before I even get to pruning the salt brush...