by Joyce and I struck the first blow in the battle against sock weeds on SA today. These are grassy weeds whose seeds stick in one’s socks causing discomfort and they’ve gotten entirely out of hand the last few years. They sprout in winter and are hardly noticeable until the first balmy days of spring and then they are all over everywhere, impossible to deal with by hand and immune to broadleaf weed killer. Glyphosate will kill them but it will also kill the grass so apparently the only way to fight them is with a preemergent. We put down a couple of bags in some of the worst infestations between the house and the garden. The preemergent is sort of expensive but if if works it will be worth it. No doubt even if it does work it will take us years to get them under control.
Last weekend we were shooting baskets on the new basketball goal Abigail got for her birthday. Kari asked me whether they should get one you set in concrete or one with a base you fill with water or sand. I told her the former seemed like a better choice and that’s the one they got but that meant Chris had to go to the trouble of setting it in concrete. I was thinking of just mixing up some concrete in the wheelbarrow like we’ve always done and pouring it in around the goal post in the hole we’ve dug. Simple. However the instructions said dig a hole 18″X24″, which is a pretty big hole. Then Chris got Quickcrete and its instructions said just fill the hole with dry Quickcrete and ad water, except the water didn’t seem to soak in past the first couple of inches. I’m not sure what all Chris did but, with their trip to Switzerland, it was nearly a month before he had it finished. However, it is finished and Abigail is a pretty good shooter. The new goal should give her an opportunity to get better if she takes advantage of it.
The city is encouraging voluntary water rationing and asking people with odd street numbers (or was it odd people with even street numbers, I forget) to water on odd days and people with even numbers to water on even days. Now aint that just a typical bureaucratic solution. I use native grasses, drought-tolerant trees and bushes and even do extensive xeriscaping. Now I’m suppose to conform to some silly timetable while the jackass down the street tries to replicate a landscape typical of the eastern seaboard (why do you never hear someone refer to the western seabord) or, worse, someplace like England. His sprinkler system runs more water down the gutter than I use watering my yard. The city says if we don’t start getting rain soon the voluntary will switch to mandatory. If they really want to curtail water usage, why don’t they charge more when a person uses more. Let’s say the first 10,000 gallons are billed at the current rate but the second 10,000 gallons are billed at double that rate, the third 10,000 gallons are billed at double the rate again and so on. That’s just a change to a computer program and there are no enforcement issues. The city could announce they are going to do that and phase it in over six or 12 months to give people time to adjust. I’d be willing to bet people would curtail their use of water much more enthusiastically than if they could only water on certain days.
Last week I got a notice from the city that they’ve set up this drainage utility. Many municipalities have them, you see. They say the problem is that there is so much competition for tax dollars in the regular budget that things like storm drainage get short changed. To my way of thinking, handling storm drainage is one of the core responsibilities of the city. In other words, its one of the things we set up a government to do on the local level. That begs the question: What are the items in the regular budget that are crowding out this core municipal responsibility? They can call it what they want, but it’s just a tax increase. Yes, it’s less than $3 per month but there’s another thing. They say they use the county records to decide who pays what. They have three categories: small, medium and large. The category you fall into is based on the non-permeable area of your property such as roofs and driveways which leads to runoff and for which the new drainage utility will have to allow. I got stuck in the large category, I guess because when the two houses and the shop are added together the total non-permeable area falls in the large category. The thing is, 2005 and the shop are surrounded with acres of grass. There is no runoff that reaches a street. And another thing, SA slopes west to east. That means even the runoff from 1911 goes east out into the acres of grass. Because water doesn’t run up hill, there is no runoff from 1911 to speak of either. I won’t fall on my sword if I have to pay for the 1911 non-runoff, but I’m going to get with them on the other two non-permeable areas. Wish me luck.