(no subject)

[mithriltabby]

My street is in a part of Sunnyvale whose property values have appreciated considerably. Some of my neighbors are nouveau riche who are building great big houses and going to all manner of effort with their lawns; some own their own homes but couldn’t afford to buy them at their modern prices, and have impressive quantities of weeds growing on their lawns. (I’ve also noticed that the nouveau riche don’t consider it worth their time to spend a few bucks on some weed killer to spray on the weeds that grow on their lots while their huge fancy homes are under consctruction.) Weeds, by their nature, tend to spread. So I go through cycles of “I can’t be bothered to deal with these things if my neighbors are too lazy to spend a pittance on weed killer,” and “my guests are going to have trouble getting out of the passenger sides of their cars if they park in front of my house, I guess I better do something about that.” There are now five garbage bags full of pulled weeds waiting for the garbage truck, along with the regular garbage bin being full as well. And oh, do my muscles ache...

I finished Oddworld III after coming in from weeding and collapsing; I was rather surprised to find it only has two “chapters”, given that the first two games were considerably longer.

Comments

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Lawns are a horrible affliction put on this earth by the Victorians, who brought us such wonderful and useful ideas as skirts for piano legs. Rip everything resembling a blade of grass out of your front yard, and plant creeping thyme. It comes in beautiful colors, flowers in colors from pink to yellow to white, can deal with crappy soil and nearly no water (water once every two weeks), and best of all, can be eaten, which, unless you're a cow, isn't something you can say about grass.
Mow once every few months (it grows low) and you're good to go. Part of my garden is thyme and oregano (another good creeper) battling for world supremacy.
Other good ground covers are chamomile and rosemary (rosemary needs heat, though, which your environment might not supply enough of).

[mithriltabby]

We have creeping thyme and blue star creeper in the segments between paving stones (big irregular hunks of flat rock) leading up to the front door. We’re ripping out the front lawn and planning on xeriscaping the whole front yard (eventually getting down to citrus trees and drought-resistant plants— Sunnyvale gets quite warm in the summer and nearly freezing in the winter). We’re hoping to put in some shade and a fish pond in the back yard and see if we can change the climate there a bit.

[cmccurry.livejournal.com]

If you ever need an extra pair of hands for this, I am confident that Amanda would happily fly out. She is determined that there will be no grass on our lawn when we finally buy our house.

And of course our rabbits would be happy to help you in clearing grass. Besides, I think Bellini would love the chance to meet economy sized kitties.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

RAWK! I am a xeriscaping whore. I mean, the only reason I'm pissing around with the current veggie garden I have now is that it's community gardening land, and it would be a bit weird to clear out all the water-thrifty native weeds and replace them with, well, foreign water-thrifty OTHER weeds. Plus I like strawberries. Mmmm, strawberries.
Herbs by and large tend to be water-wise--- I highly recommend lavender (Mara will love it) for your front yard. Mine is a mass of happy fat bees. Many sages have glorious flowers, too--
Erk.
I've been doing gardening research since I was a teenager, so I tend to get all rambly. Sorry. :)