Winter may be southern California’s finest season. The temps are moderate (we’ve been in the 80s for most of February) and winter rains turn the hills into a lush green with native grasses. But weeds accompany the native grasses. Often abundantly. Our house has a slope, about 20 feet high and 90 feet long, covered with ice plant. I’ve discovered weeding it often is best, but navigating the bank in my old steel baseball cleats in my 70s can wear me out. So, I do it in stages. Just a few weeks ago…
Read MoreOf Wine and Weeds
Today, the Sunday before this post went up, provided some great encouragement and a lesson. The message at church convicted me to the core of my soul, then I had a great bacon cheeseburger at a local golf course. Then Sheila and I stopped off at our winery (well, we’re members, not owners 😉), and something struck me. Look at the pic above. Just in front of us were…
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Defensible Spaces
In addition to nearly two dozen wildfires in CA, smoke from a fire at nearby Camp Pendleton covers our town. No, we’re not revisiting wildfires this week, but I do want to steal a fire fighting term—defensible space, which is controlling the vegetation around your house to help keep it safe. To broaden it, that term applies to our…
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Weed and Feed
Spring arrives with blessings and curses. Daylight lasts longer, days warm up, plants grow. Consider those not only as blessings but also as curses. Why? Undesired weeds abound along with desired plants. While I put in a front patio with pavers and a lattice cover and pots and a drip system and plants, the weeds on our south bank took full advantage of my neglect and spring’s blessings. The curse of spring. Four days of weeding on a steep slope moved the undesired plants into four wheelbarrow loads, like the one above. I couldn’t avoid...
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