. . . Oh. Never mind. It’s only Sam mowing the lawn.
I could almost have passed for an alien with my ear-protector headphones and respirator, shoving the mower around the yard to cut down the overgrown bits and blow the mulch of leaves and stuff away from the bare bits, of which I have a nastily large amount. A hopeful crowd of grackles followed me as I worked, hoping to find bugs or grubs the mower uncovered or stirred up. I don’t know if they found anything (I hope they did, because the yard is riddled with white grubs), but I picked up the better part of another pound of mixed nuts, and the grass is short enough that I can easily see whatever else falls—at least until more leaves fall and I need to rake the yard again.
I’m considering whether I should empty the compost pen before adding this year’s leaves to it, or just dump the new ones on top and let them all rot together some more. I hate to disturb the pen currently, because it looks like I have a cantaloupe vine and a bunch of sunflower sprouts going in there from kitchen scraps we’ve pitched into the bin, but several nasty bare spots of black clay in the yard could certainly use some nicely-rotted compost as top dressing. And there are gonna be a LOT of leaves right shortly; at the moment I have a pile next the pen that’s probably big enough to fill the whole thing right now if I shoveled ’em all into it.
AND I found that the poison oak that was in my neighbor’s yard has gotten over into mine, and into the herb garden. The Ohio State Extension fact sheet on it says that the best way to deal with it when it gets into crop or ornamental plants is to paint the individual leaflets (repeatedly) with Roundup. Which means, I guess, I’d better go figure out where that bottle of Roundup is that I remember puting in the shed.
Ying tong iddle I po. Fnord.
