At about 1pm today at work, I suddenly got the super-urge to do yardwork when I got home rather than go on a run with Morgan. The weeds are growing knee high now with all the rain lately and I’ve noticed that some of my neighbors have “mowed” it down like “grass.” Missing grass tremensly, I liked the looks of this and figured I’d try it!
Funny thing about the desert…..in the summer the green is all on the whispy thin desert trees and the ground is brown and bare. But in the winter, the trees are brown and bare (yes, trees in the desert lose their leaves in winter too) and the ground is green because of the winter rains. Well, I should mention that this is only typical of the area we live in….sort of a basin between the Catalina Mtns and the Rincon Mtns, so the ground collects more water here. Closer to the city, and up in the foothills, people aren’t as lucky to have so many weeds in winter. 🙂
I bolted home, threw on some work clothes, grabbed the weed wacker, and went to town. Soon, all the weeds in the front yard were leveled out to ankle-high. I must admit, it looked great!! Paul and I walked around the yard as it got dark, admiring our “grass” and talking about future yard-improvement plans (that we’ll someday tackle in our immense amounts of freetime, ha).
Paul then decided to head to the store to grab some groceries for dinner, and I continued with some more yard work since I was on a roll. [Please note: when living the weekend-road-warrior-rock-climber lifestyle, weekends are soley set aside for climbing, not for silly things like yardwork. So Paul and I often find ourselves using our rather ridiculous, superb time-management skills…..such as…..ummm…setting up a floodlight in the front yard after it gets dark so that one can continue on with the yardwork].
So with floodlight in place (situated not to disturb the neighbors of course!), I began clipping down the expired bougainvillea so that it can grow again and bloom beautifully in spring (which will probably be sometime later this month). After that, I began to pull the weeds that had sprouted in the flower bed by the house. After that, I trimmed back the pretty purple flowered ground cover that was spreading out onto the walkway next to the flowerbed. After that, I tackled my hanging pots and clipped out all of the dead leaves. And after that, I swept the walk-way, took my gardening tools back to the shed, called Morgan back from her horse poop sniffing over at the neighbors, and un-plugged the floodlight.
Waa-lah, yard is done. Should be good for another 2-3 months. Gotta love the desert.
