My parking strip, like many others in the neighborhood, has been a disgrace for quite some time. When I moved in (back when this was an affordable working-class neighborhood), it had a bit of scraggly grass and rather a lot of weeds. Thanks to a rigorous one-or-twice-a-year glyphosate spraying program, it's been bare dirt with a few really scraggly weeds for quite some time now.
This morning (being a sunny morning before the end of the rainy season, assuming we actually do get some of the rain that's forecast), it was Off To Home Despot for 12 cubic feet of planting soil to cover up the nasty dry hard dirt that nothing's lived in for a long time. Also, a couple of packets of low-growing, drought-tolerant flowering plant seeds.
Spread the planting soil around; realize that half again as much might have been a good idea, but it's not worth another trip to the store; sprinkle the seeds over the top; check the seed box to see what's sitting around and fits the specs.
Hmmm. Several packets of seeds that fit the description, all packed for 1998. Oh, well: dispose of those seeds by sprinkling them over the parking strip along with the new ones, and hope they haven't mutated into anything that'll eat passing children (the cops can get so unpleasant when that happens). Guess I'd planned on doing this back in '98, or maybe fall of '97, but got sidetracked, or maybe was planning to do something more ambitious involving a rototiller.
Then vast quantities of water, probably to be repeated a few times over the next couple of weeks (Tuesday's rain has already been downgraded to "cloudy and windy"; expect the actual weather to be bone-dry and blazing hot).
Maybe next weekend I'll give the bald patches in my former front lawn the same treatment. Got a little more flexibility in what I plant there, on account of having a sprinkler system (though, given that there does seem to be a drought, I won't be wanting to run the sprinklers very much).
And: is it just me, or is the population of day laborers outside Home Despot turning Anglo? And were things a bit quiet for midmorning on a warm sunny Sunday?
Afterthought: now that the parking strip is covered with nice moisture-retaining planting soil, I should maybe reintroduce angleworms. There's a bait shop next door to Tinga's vet, but then there's also plenty of worm-infested soil out in the back yard. Or I could just wait for them to migrate of their own accord.
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