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At long last we are getting rain. Not a brief shower but a rainy spell. When we got back from Garland Monday the rain gauge was empty except for bird poop. Luckily Joyce cleaned it out because it started raining in the night and is still doing so this morning (Wednesday). Yesterday I emptied 1.39 inches out of the gauge and this morning there was another 1.76 inches in it. I’m so happy.
Our visit to Garland was fun and busy. We attended some granddaughter activity nearly every day: soccer, volleyball, band concert(Kaylee is first chair flutist). I sat in for Dave one evening at the dads’ watch thingy at S&V’s school so he could coach Kaylee’s soccer team. We spent a pleasant day with K&J and we cleaned Jill’s pond the next day. Sunday we celebrated Vivian’s birthday. I drove to Waco and picked up the Abster so she could join in the festivities.
I worked on the pavilion construction at Wildcat Bluff nearly every Saturday morning until the end of August. It is now finished and aren’t we glad. It looks nice and should be a nice venue for outdoor education, weddings, funerals and public floggings. During this period I have been putting in my usual Wednesday pro bono work. Lately that has mostly consisted of pond and butterfly garden maintenance, but I have also worked on eliminating mesquite. Stop me if you have heard this before, but cutting down a mesquite tree no matter how small does not get rid of it. Where before there may have been 1-3 stems, after cutting, it comes back with a dozen. Last winter I cut back a number of small mesquite and, predictably, they’ve come back. I’ve sprayed them with broadleaf weedkiller and marked them with little flags. I’ve started a second round of spraying, made easier because I don’t have to hunt for them due to the flags. I hope this will actually kill them so that when I cut them back to the ground this winter, they don’t come back in the spring. Here’s hoping.
As for SA, I’ve been letting the grama grass grow. I occurred to me by doing that, it would improve the grass which would help in weed control. Maybe with a new crop of seeds, the turf will be thicker and tend to shade out the weeds. That has allowed me to concentrate on removing existing weeds of which there is still a ready supply in spite of the dry summer. When the grass goes dormant next month I’ll mow, dispersing the seeds in the process, or, at least, that’s the theory.