Week in Review

[kate_nepveu]

Spring! The trees haven't leafed out yet, but it was 60-ish this weekend and we got a lot of yard work done. The everyellow and the spiky red triffid in front have been replaced by a dwarf burning bush (looking more like a stick at the moment, hopefully it grows fast) and some white Mediterranean heather. In the back, we put down grass seed again on the side (we're giving up on the back until the fall), this time with biodegradable protective matting. It would be really nice if this worked. I also set up our Christmas present from my folks, a gadget to trap biting insects. The placement may need fine-tuning, as something took a good chunk out of my neck this afternoon while I was reading the latest Dortmunder, but it's definitely catching some insects (you can see them caught on the sticky paper. Take that, bugs!).

The doggie was very pleased to be outside so much this weekend. She even hung out in the front yard with Chad (tied on a long leash to a tree), which she usually doesn't get to do because it's not fenced. If only she wouldn't insist on eating clumps of topsoil . . .

I also got my hair cut yesterday, hooray. The bad cut had gotten positively unbearable, so I walked into the first place I came to on upper Union Street on the theory that as long as it was shorter, it would be an improvement. I think I like this cut, but I have to live with it a bit; it's much more shaped, with the very bottom considerably thinner than usual. We also had dinner out last night, a Mexican place in downtown Albany, which was nice though I ate far too much.

I even got some reading done this weekend, though the book log won't be updated tonight because I have Work. It's going to be a bad couple of weeks for Work, alas, so I really ought to go check on the laundry and then get to it.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Why do you want grass at all? It's so obviously not suited to the climate I don't know why people bother. It's suitable for Britain, but wouldn't it make sense here to grow something like clover that covers the ground and you can walk on and which doesn't die or need a ton of watering in extreme heat?

I was thinking last summer that people here seem to want the idea of a lawn so much they go to all this trouble and I don't understand it.

[kate_nepveu]

I don't agree that it's not suitable for the climate--we didn't do anything to our front yard last summer (I'm pretty sure we didn't even water it) and it was fine. As I understand it, it's new grass that's particularly vulnerable to the heat. We've already got grass over most of the backyard, it's just patchy so we want to get more of it to improve the drainage and reduce the amount of mud the dog tracks in.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

It actually takes some amazing skill to kill grass. You need to do something really dumb, like cut it extra short (because you're sick of mowing so often) right in the middle of a long hot dry spell, and then utterly fail to water it at all for weeks.