Yard work is terrible
This is what my yard looks like right now. It’s completely ridiculous. Some kind of weed has taken over, climbing over everything in its path.
It has tiny hooks all over it, like velcro, It’s not pleasant to pull out, but it’s fairly easy. Let’s all keep in mind that my yard is completely flat. Those plants are making faux-hills. It also seems to spawn giant moths, that randomly fly at your face when you start trying to weed.
After about half an hour I had cleared only a small patch of ground:
And filled this entire compost bin. It looks like I’m incubating a swamp-thing baby.
I felt like She-Hulk, ripping huge mounds of this stuff out of the ground, but it seemed to have very little effect. The shed is about to be consumed, and Flapjack seems worried.
He has been having a ton of trouble in the yard since the weeds are so high and he’s a dwarf. Also, I might have stepped in dookie.
As an added bonus, this vindictive plant leave tiny, horrible scratches wherever it can grab your flesh. These are made exponentially better when you start cleaning the dookie off your shoes, and the spray bottle of vinegar accidentally coats your arms, leading to a unique itchy-burning sensation.
Why is yard work so awful?
Why I Hate Grass
Lately I find myself having to explain things that I feel are pretty obvious. Yesterday it was cars, today it’s grass. I don’t water my yard. I don’t fertilize, seed, aerate, mulch, re-sod, or any of that crap. My philosophy is if it can’t survive on its own, it wasn’t meant to. These are PLANTS. They evolved outside and in certain regions of the country. I’m not going to work my ass off so some Yankee grass can sit there doing nothing. I don’t hire yard guys, chemical spreading dudes, or anything like that.
What is the purpose of a yard? To be a big patch of plain green. Why does it matter what particular plant makes up the green? I keep my weeds mowed down, and it looks just like grass to me. I can’t believe that some people even pull out perfectly good grass because it’s the “wrong” species. It was growing there, right? And it’s obviously better suited to the area than that wuss grass you want. So why not let the stuff that will thrive, thrive?
I think this issue comes more to the forefront here in Texas, and especially the hill country, where I live. We don’t have as much rain as East Texas, but this is not the desert, like West Texas. People still expect you to have a lawn. Don’t get me wrong, my yard is not some kind of blight on the neighborhood. I just let nature have its way out there. Plus I manage to kill all the plants I actual try to grow, so the yard is probably better off without my “delicate” touch.
Much of the year, we are under water restrictions. I’m not going to water my yard when I watch Lake Travis get visibly lower each day. I think it’s completely unethical that people pour drinkable water into the dirt, and it’s beyond selfish.
One thing I do is use soaker hoses around the base of the foundation. You know, those black hoses with holes all over that drip water. We use those (in theory) every evening (but I forget a lot), in order to keep the ground around the foundation moist. This prevents too much shrinkage in the soil, which can cause the foundation to crack. This uses much less water than watering a whole yard, and will (hopefully) prevent major costly repairs in the future.
Save your money and let the yard do what it wants. We use a mulching mower, without a bag, so the grass clippings mulch the yard naturally. My goal is to plant some kind of ground cover that will do well in heavy shade with zero attention, but we just haven’t gotten as far as working on the front yard yet. Give me another couple years, maybe I’ll get to it.
My Attempts at Cleverness 