Weeds

It seems that since I started renting homes about seven years ago, I've been in a never-ending battle with weeds. When we lived in the Central Valley of California, we could grow just about anything in our yard, but what came up most easily was an abundance of weeds. The Emperor and I spent alternate weekends mowing, raking, and trying to stay ahead of the burgeoning green stuff surrounding our bungalow, and since the ground was soft and fertile, weeding the beds was time-consuming but not taxing.

Our first house here Out West had not been lived in for about a year before we moved in, and the yard was overwhelmingly weedy. I just went ahead and let the Emperor have at it with the weed-eater because I just didn' t have whole days to devote to pulling things out of the ground. I wanted to have a lovely outdoor space to dine alfresco or just hang out in with a book, but it wasn't to be, not at that location.

At our present home, again a rental house, we have a bigger and for the most part, a neater yard, but we're again at odds with the weeds. There's about a million square miles of lawn (it seems that big -- just ask the Emperor about mowing it), a concrete slab, and a ten-foot by twelve-foot weed patch. I can see some real potential in that patch -- it's right outside the back door, convenient to put a grill on and maybe some outdoor furniture would be nice there, if we cared to pave it in some way, or plant some grass. Right now the Emperor just whips the weeds down with a weed eater, but we don't want to kill what's growing there because it's windy here, very windy, and the dust is bad enough without having a patch of bare ground near the house. Plus, I'm not a fan of weed killer; there is a lot of wildlife nearby and I like it that way.

When those nifty fabric-covered gazebos first appeared a couple of years ago, my first reaction was delight. Hey! Something to put over that weed patch! But my Southern Califorinia self gave way quickly to my practical, Out West self and I realized that I didn't want to put potentially a couple of hundred dollars into something that would be carried away by the wind, so I sigh when I see them at the local KMart... does anybody here buy them??

We had bamboo shades over our outside sun-facing windows to keep the house cool, but they were all ripped right off the house by the wind. Inside white roller shades do the trick now.

The house's original owners fought the weeds in the front yard by putting down weed barrier plastic and covering it with rock, broken only by occasional trees and a few rock-rimmed flower beds. There's not much I can plant there, because the deer will eat everything that's not a marigold, a zinnia, or a poppy. Yes, I've planted my bed in bright marigolds this year. But I don't mind the rocks because the yard doen't need much water. I can hand-carry all it needs in a couple of buckets, if necessary.

Back to the weed patch. We've thought about planting grass, but it would take a larger outlay of cash than the landlord is willing to put out, and I'm not willing to spend my hard-earned to improve his place when he won't. We thought that we might put down some big patio-paving stones, but again, it's more than we want to afford for somebody else's house. But today during lunch, I found another reason to just leave things as they are and head to a park if I want to have a picnic.


I guess we're doing something right. Somebody's using the weeds.

Added later: The neighbors have fenced their yard, too, and shored it up against the depredations of the local bunny mafia... but the doe just gracefully leaped over the fence and is now serenely enjoying the benefit of a well-kept vegetable garden.