No Poison

when we moved here in June, 2004 the driveway/parking area in the foreground below had zero vegetation. this is a current picture. middle of winter. more stuff grows in the spring and summer. we tried a mixture of vinegar, dishwashing soap, and salt, recommended by a neighbor as an effective weed control. hah. everything thrived. we suspect that the previous owners used roundup or some such "weed control". we do pull the broadleaf plants, but the grass is too much to keep up with. we aren't going to use poison. maybe fire.



the photo below shows an area that was grass when we moved in. luscious, green, golf course pure grass. now it's a mass of moss and broadleaf plants. we tried weeding. even paid a very nice local kid to weed. i think we'd need 10 kids full time clean it all. and even then, every weed removed leaves a hole, or at least a grassless patch of dirt, which sprouts another dandelion or such long before the sod can fill in. we asked a neighbor whose lush, weedfree lawn we were admiring how he maintains it thusly. fertilizer and weed killer. oh.

the only golfing possible here is off in the rough.
and don't get me started on the dirt mounds everywhere. gophers, i reckon. last year there were a few gopher dirt piles waaay over by the property line. this ex-lawn is 150 feet from there. this year seems to be good year for the little diggers. i have seen pastures locally with hundreds of gopher dirt piles in lines going ever which way. last year tent caterpillars. this year gophers. ya think nature is unbalanced? do we have a hand in it?