What a leisurely Sunday!
Took Baron to park where he made new friends...Dexter the Wheaton terrier, Queenie the Aussie mix, and a Border Collie whose name I've forgotten. The Border Collie stole Baron's brand-new squeaky ball and wouldn't give it back. It felt like the days when your best-friend's toddler stole your child's toy...whaddaya do?
When we left it started to hail really hard. This is NOT the weather I am looking for!
By the time we got home the sun was out...go figure!
I think the sun made Hubby feel ambitious so he decided to prune the Gravenstein tree. He does a great job of pruning; but we still get very few apples in the summer. Like 7 or 8. I suspect it's because I won't use chemicals to kill the little bugs that invade it every spring. They gobble the apple blossoms like it's Thanksgiving Dinner! So if you have tips for how to kill the bugs without using harsh pesticides, I'd love to hear from you!
Hubby spotted me wandering about the yard with my camera. "Why don't you pick up the sticks?" he asked hopefully.
"Maybe later..." I lied. It's not gonna happen. I'm off the clock this afternoon!
Tulips are popping up here and there. You can't really live in Lynden without planting tulips. It's a Dutch town. The yards are meticulous. Well, except mine. Our's used to be meticulous, with the help of all of Lilly Miller's handy dandy pesticides. Our grass no longer looks like a putting green. We don't have lots of shiny, toxic apples, and when it get's hot, heaven forbid, I let my lawn scorch a bit! I try to keep the dandelions in check with my neat new dandelion puller, but they're not as afraid of me now that I don't use Weed-n-Feed or Round-up...so they keep returning to my lawn.
Same with the moles. Word on the street, or in this case, in the tunnel, is that we're soft on vermin here on Park Street. Our friend Bob has a personal war with moles. He's kind of a red-neck. Don't worry, if Bob reads my blog, he'll be flattered to be called a red-neck. Well Bob got so perturbed with his moles that he ran a hose attached to the exhaust of his car down the mole hill. Apparently the moles have some kind of civil defense early warning system, because he didn't kill a one! He did manage to somehow kill one mole. You know what he did? He put that dead mole's carcass on a stake in the yard to show the other's what would happen to them if they didn't skedaddle. I kid you not! But the moles weren't impressed. Moles are not easily intimidated. Either that or they were too blind to see their comrade hanging out to dry in the front yard. Well somehow, Bob found out that if you put little windmills in the yard, with poles that extend down into the dirt--the noise or vibration scares the critters away. He sent away for a few and by golly, they worked! So he brought us one, and by golly, it worked...they all took refuge in the back yard. So we now have 2 windmills, one for the front yard and one for the back yard. Now we're pretty much mole-free, but we've noticed a lot of mole hills next door.
People joke about our town. Lynden, it is rumored, has 'lawn police' who visit unruly, non-mowing citizens. I've never actually seen a lawn policeman-but I suppose that the rumor helps keep us all in line. It's probably an urban legend. But if there are lawn police, I expect they'll be calling on me one of these days. I wonder if they'll search the garage to make sure that we have a good supply of Diazinon...
"Blue skies, nothing but blue skies...I see!"
Oh no! Hubby just came in and gave me the news...I missed it. The sticks are all picked up! Aw, shucks! (wink-wink!)
Hope you're Sunday is leisurely and that all of your sticks have been picked up for you!
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3 comments:
well that was a fun post! We live in an area with lawn/yard police. I've never actually seen them but I have gotten letters from them....time to pick up your weeds, time to take care of that moss...you know the type! We are the renegades of the neighborhoods here, I'll take spots on my apples and weeds in the yard, I don't want the pesticides either.
great pics!
Gosh! I'm still laughing! You have real live moles? I thought I had issues with our lawn! We have soft leaf buffalow lawn and you cant really use any chemicals on it anyway.My hubby LOVES his lawn, I dont know how many times we have hand weeded it over the past few years... :)
I lived with the lawn police for tweleve years with my beautiful golf course of a lawn, then I moved to a rural town. No neighbors for ten, well off the road acres. My glimps of heaven.
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