Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Mon, Dec 29 2003
Yard Work In December
Decembers here are strange. I spent the first part of this past weekend recuperating from last week's Christmas dash, and then spent Sunday catching up on yard work (which had been delayed due to rain last week) before this current rainstorm came in. If you happen to be reading this from the northern latitudes, let me remind you that this is coastal California, and though the grass would otherwise slow its growth because of cooler temps, this is also the "wet" season in the state, when heavy rainfall coaxes grass and dormant weed seeds into green plants of near tropical proportions. While the rest of you shovel snow and scrape ice off your windshield in the mornings, we are still out with mowers and clippers. By January we have to fight to remove the Christmas lights that have become entangled in vines and tree branches that have grown around them while the lights sat on them for the month of December.
I did learn something new recently when it comes to grass, and that is that Nasella pulchra, or purple needlegrass, is the state grass of California. You can even buy it at "native plant" nurseries. It's too bad I can't sell off some of this yellow oxalis. It's conspicuously absent in the summer, but when the wet season arrives, it takes over whole sections of the flower bed and threatens to crowd out every other living thing in this part of the Western Hemisphere.
It's okay though. I'd still rather rush to mow and pull weeds between rainstorms than have to shovel snow off the sidewalks or shovel the street to free the car parked at the curb (that was still accessible until a snowplow buried it while clearing the street). But I can't do this, or this.
posted at: 13:24 | category: /Miscellaneous | link to this entry
Decembers here are strange. I spent the first part of this past weekend recuperating from last week's Christmas dash, and then spent Sunday catching up on yard work (which had been delayed due to rain last week) before this current rainstorm came in. If you happen to be reading this from the northern latitudes, let me remind you that this is coastal California, and though the grass would otherwise slow its growth because of cooler temps, this is also the "wet" season in the state, when heavy rainfall coaxes grass and dormant weed seeds into green plants of near tropical proportions. While the rest of you shovel snow and scrape ice off your windshield in the mornings, we are still out with mowers and clippers. By January we have to fight to remove the Christmas lights that have become entangled in vines and tree branches that have grown around them while the lights sat on them for the month of December.
I did learn something new recently when it comes to grass, and that is that Nasella pulchra, or purple needlegrass, is the state grass of California. You can even buy it at "native plant" nurseries. It's too bad I can't sell off some of this yellow oxalis. It's conspicuously absent in the summer, but when the wet season arrives, it takes over whole sections of the flower bed and threatens to crowd out every other living thing in this part of the Western Hemisphere.
It's okay though. I'd still rather rush to mow and pull weeds between rainstorms than have to shovel snow off the sidewalks or shovel the street to free the car parked at the curb (that was still accessible until a snowplow buried it while clearing the street). But I can't do this, or this.
posted at: 13:24 | category: /Miscellaneous | link to this entry
