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Today is a beautiful day. 70-something degrees. Sunny. Breezy. A great day for a hike! But that's not what I did today.

I suspect many HAZers find a great mental escape from a few miles on the trail. But what other activities do you get "therapy" from?

For me ... I know 95% of you will call me crazy (and the other 5% will invite me over your place) ... weeding.

Yup. I just spent about 6 hours kneeling, sitting, crouching, plucking, picking, clearing, digging. My yard looks fantastic (especially next to the forests growing in my neighbors yards). And I feel great.

Anybody else got unusual things you just enjoy doing?

(P.S. To maintain some level of normalcy, I should say that I wouldn't want to weed every weekend. But those handful of times each year that I do it is a real treat!)

Jeff MacE wrote:Maybe just pulling them really is the pleasure?

I believe so. I mean, you get to the point where if a weed doesn't come out clean (the stem breaks, or you don't get the root), you get mad and you start clawing at the dirt like a madman, until that pesky, cheeky root has been obliterated. . Then there's that blissful high when one comes out clean (and the mustards are famous for this), with a smooth, soft action It always makes me want to do it again, and again, and again :GB: And then there's Bermuda grass... :stretch:

I must be Anti-Zen... Pulling weeds makes me crazy! Whoever coined the phrase, "Better Living through Chemistry" must have had me in mind... If weeds can't be controlled with Round-Up or pre-emergent, then the area should be covered in concrete... Of course, I've got 5+ acres to maintain; pulling weeds probably did make me crazy (I used to do manual control)...)

The deer ate my grass. Weeds are all that holds the soil in place.

I love pulling weeds in the front yard. I can't stand it in the backyard. That's why the backyard gets a chemical bath and I pull a few in the front on the way to work every day.

writelots wrote:And then there's Bermuda grass... :stretch:

The Bermuda is one thing that deserves chemicals. Normally I think that whatever chemicals they put in Round-Up (or my personal favorite, concentrated Ortho Triox Total Vegetation Killer ... used without diluting) probably aren't the kind of thing I should really be putting in the ground, which is why I think that pulling weeds is a better alternative.

Except Bermuda. That deserves whatever "death-to-the-planet", "you-need-a-license-to-use-this" toxic chemical I can find at a "wholesale-only" kind of landscaping shop. :guilty:

And it STILL grows back. Damn pumpkin, pumpkined, pumpkining, pumpkiner, weed!

Bermuda is the devil. It's so much worse when you have a neighbor that lets his yard go and that crud takes over. You spend the entire afternoon pulling the Bermuda creeping in from his side...

If only I could share in your bliss, Jeff. I unleash a perfect storm of industrial grade herbicides, fire, and horrific cursing upon our yard. To no avail.

What stinks is that some of the invasive stuff actually *likes* fire...

Bermuda eradication pretty much requires removal of the top 2 feet of infected soil by bulldozer. I've hit mine with half a dozen doses of triple-the-recomended strength Triox (yay!), and it still comes back.

That is savage stuff out there. Roundup seems to keep ours in check...

At least you (probably) don't have poison ivy in your yard. I have to keep reminding Mrs. big_load what it looks like in winter, or else she'll pull the vines and get it all over her gloves. That's the only thing I use Roundup on.

At least you can eat mustard greens! They are good, if you like steamed greens with butter and lemon juice, salt and pepper. They have to be sort of young and tender--if they have gone to flowering then it is too late and they will be bitter.

I am not kidding. We used to drive out to the backcountry in San Diego and pick them in spring!

I used to pull weeds, and pull, and pull. Now I do a chemical attack!

azbackpackr wrote:At least you can eat mustard greens! They are good, if you like steamed greens with butter and lemon juice, salt and pepper. They have to be sort of young and tender--if they have gone to flowering then it is too late and they will be bitter.

I am not kidding. We used to drive out to the backcountry in San Diego and pick them in spring!

You can eat this stuff, eh? My neighbor has enough to make salad for a month. As broke as he seems to be I'll recommend he start grazing his front yard!!

chumley wrote:Except Bermuda. That deserves whatever "death-to-the-planet", "you-need-a-license-to-use-this" toxic chemical I can find at a "wholesale-only" kind of landscaping shop. :guilty:

And it STILL grows back. Damn pumpkin, pumpkined, pumpkining, pumpkiner, weed!

And to think, people still INTENTIONALLY seed, sod and nurture the stuff. Even the new varieties (which are supposed to be "sterile" and non-invasive) become impossible to remove without the use of nuclear devices and heavy machinery. I know that we as a society love our manicured grass lawns, but I wish to heaven that no one had ever discovered the resiliency of this particular weed. Evil Evil Evil!!!

I used to water, and mow my bermuda grass in Tucson. We don't have it up here. The worst scourge in my veggie garden has to be a variety of tiny morning glory known as bindweed. That is some nasty sh*t to have crawling all over your veggie patch. It winds up the cornstalks, and everywhere else. It is like some sort of mini-kudzu attack. You can't get rid of it, you just have to keep chopping away at it.

I get a lot of clovers in my garden plots. I doesn't seem to matter how many of them I eradicate, next week there will be more.

You can eat those, too, if you're really hungry! ;)

They taste better with a Guinness though.

Guinness is on sale at Fresh and Easy for $4.99 a six pack.