Lawn Love
I have been sleeping well at night. Now that SPPC has given me the opportunity to express thoughts, my mind isn’t going crazy with ideas and keeping me awake. Now it’s my wife’s turn. She lost a lot of sleep last night thinking about clay projects. So she left me today to work at Alpha Fine Arts in Sacramento. (She is coming back though.) So much creative talent, and so little time.
While playing in the garden today, several thoughts came to mind. At least some of you have continued to resist removing your lawn to conserve water. I am one of these. I love my lawn. At one time it covered the entire back yard. Now it’s far less than 1000 square feet. It contains no weeds, but there are a few brown spots where my son’s dog has done his thing. I love it best when the grandkids are here. See, they have no lawn. Their house is on a steep slope in the hills above Los Gatos. The creek that runs 100 yards below them represents the line of the San Andreas Fault. So you see, it is a treat for them to have a lawn to play on. The girls do cartwheels and wrestle about. At lunch time they spread out a blanket and they lie on their backs in the shade of the hackberry tree while they eat their Nana special sandwiches (strawberry jam, creamed cheese, and peanut butter}. This is really why I love my lawn.
So if you still have a lawn, I hope you have a mower that has a good vacuuming blade. Practically all mowers come with a mulching blade that does not do a great job at sucking up plant debris. You generally can order a blade that does a good job at vacuuming. There unfortunately is no such blade for my Craftsman mower. What do you do with your clippings? I hope you use them for mulch around your plants in the vegetable garden. If your clippings go into the organic recycle bin, I would suggest that you put a layer of dry plant material in first so that the grass clippings don’t form a gooey mess that sticks to the bottom of the bin. Another suggestion is to leave the bin lid open. This lets the contents dry out and this eliminates a lot of odor and prevents the condensation on the bin inner surfaces that gathers debris when the bins are dumped. Now . . . if you just had a power washer, you could keep all your bins clean enough to eat out of . . . Perhaps that’s a stretch.
Stan, The Blog Man