Round 'Em Up And Brand 'Em!

First, I just wanted to note that Blogger just instituted some sort of spam detection on the comments, so we'll see if that cuts the number of comments in half. Honestly, I'm running about 1:1 with real comments to comments that aren't in a language I can read. It's a little embarrassing.

Second, Blogger also added a "Stats" page. I've pretty diligently avoided adding any sort of counter to the blog because either a) this is my blog and I don't care if anyone reads it, or b) I'm hyper-competitive (Hi Mom!) and it could get ugly quickly when I realize that nobody reads this. Take your pick. They list the total number of pageviews by day, and things like that. Apparently I have two readers in China if you believe the statistics. Maybe I have two spambots in China. That I might believe. Also, when broken down by browsers, it's 63% Firefox, 29% Safari, 5% Internet Explorer (ptui!), and 1% java, which technically isn't a browser, so I find that a little weird. However, maybe that's what the Chinese spambots are using.

(Note: if you're one of the two readers in China and you aren't a spambot, welcome!)

Anyhow, the point of this post is weeds. ("Weeds", not "weed". That would be a totally different post and would be on some anonymous site.) See, I used to read this magazine called "Organic Gardener" which was chock full of ideas on how to grow things in your back yard without using any evil, nasty chemicals. They also had some articles by complete whackjobs, but for the most part it was pretty sensible stuff about integrated pest management. I still think they're right (well, not the whackjobs) -- if you kill all the bugs, chances are you're not going to like what shows up next. If you leave things alone and let everything battle it out, you may not get perfect-looking plants, but things that grow in that area will thrive anyway. (Things that don't grow in your area will never look good, no matter how much crap you spray on them.)

Then I bought my house. And I found that some weeds (especially certain grasses) laugh at your attempts to contain them. And mulching doesn't always work. And your neighbors might not appreciate weeds growing under the shared fence. And you don't have time to hand-weed seventy-five feet of fence line. So in a particularly weak moment, I bought a bottle of Round-up.

That bottle sat in my garage for at least four months before I finally sprayed it on something. Then I buried my head in shame and went back inside, a defeated person. Yet also a relieved person because I knew I wouldn't have to worry about that clump of weeds anymore.

Yeah. Turns out I was pretty darn disappointed when that clump of weeds continued to flourish. The Round-up did nothing. It's not a good feeling to abandon your principles and then get nothing in return.

So I sprayed it again. And again. And eventually it died. And now every once in a while I spray stuff and sometimes it works, and sometimes the weeds laugh at me. (I do live in a Monsanto town, so it's not impossible that many of my weeds are already Round-up Ready, just like the seeds the farmers buy.)

Anyhow, over the weekend I was talking to my next door neighbor, Jill (whose husband, Larry, mowed my lawn again yesterday...) and I mentioned how nice the planted area in front of their house was looking. We talked about it for a while, then she looked away. "I had to start spraying it, you know," she said, in a tone that dared me to say anything. I shrugged and changed the subject, but secretly I was happy because I've been wanting to spray some stuff in my front yard and I haven't had the guts to do it yet. So now I don't need to worry if they see me.

Now it's just my neighbors on the other side I need to avoid. Excuse me while I go outside now with a flashlight...