Here is a fun game! Trim all the grass and weeds in your chaotic, overstuffed, overgrown front garden to under six inches tall. You have until 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. If you fail, the city will mow down your whole garden at your expense. If you succeed, nothing happens... and eventually you figure out that the threat is over.

Okay, but how do I figure out which of my plants the city counts as a weed?

All the instructions are on the card. I.e., if your garden gets mowed down, that was a weed.


Somehow I always end up playing this game after I go to Wiscon. The three years I didn't travel there, I don't think I did anything different here, but I didn't get a ticket. Maybe the city code compliance just didn't have enough employees those years.


This year the game is extra fun because my little old dog has diarrhea, and his wobbliness means I have to carry him down the steps when he needs to go out. After four days of sitting on the Madison Concourse's terrible chairs, all the lifting and carrying, and cleaning up after, and weeding and trimming has really fucked up my back.

It was like this, see: the city is having a Community Canopy event, where they buy 1000 trees from the Arbor Day Foundation, of various kinds that do well here. Citizens can buy them for $25 each, if they promise to plant them inside city limits and take care of them. They did this last year too, but I heard about it late in the day, and the species I would have been interested in were sold out.

This year I heard about it in the morning, and they still had cherry trees! I love the Northstar pie cherry I planted last fall! I put three Northstars in my cart and futzed around with their tool for choosing where, on your property, the trees will provide the most energy savings. (I don't actually have an air conditioner, so they will not provide energy savings, but I'm still interested in where they will provide shade.) Then I went to place my order and the Northstars were sold out!

They still had Montmorency cherries. I remember considering Montmorencies last year; I think I went with Northstar because that was what my local nursery had. I put three Montmorencies in my cart, filled out the rest of my info and agreements, and placed the no refunds, no cancellations, no kidding order.

Then I realized that I hadn't sited these trees or... checked how big they are. I tried to go back to the tool, but it just wanted to show me the order that I already placed.

My Northstar is a dwarf, 8-10 feet tall and wide. It will never tempt me, an old lady, to climb higher than is safe.

The Arbor Day site has dwarf (8-10'), semi-dwarf (12-15'), and standard (15-18') Montmorencies. I don't know which kind I bought! I may not find out until I pick them up on September 10!

Three dwarfs will fit nicely in my southeast corner. If they are full-sized I might (don't tell the city) have to plant two of them at my husband's house. Or I could offer one to each of my next-door neighbors!

So it's really spring. The peas, kale, lettuce and spinach I seeded outside last week are probably only a week too early.

I've been reading a a nature-observation blog by Christopher Brown, a novelist who lives in Austin, who is interested in the wildlife in and around the city. He writes about Austin's black vultures here: https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/the-vultures-of-sxsw?s=w

It is spring.

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An acorn squash from last fall was getting soft, so I put it on the compost pile. Squirrel could not believe its luck. Squirrel carried the squash to the top of the neighbor's fence and was like, "Imma eat this whole thing."

I was like, "It is the same size as you."

Squirrel was like, "SO WHAT?"

I moved some compost yesterday, and today my toe is complaining a lot. So I'm not going to finish that job today, but I might finally clean the kitchen.

The rest of my body is complaining too. I always lose muscle during the winter -- walking the dog is just not enough -- but four weeks of bedrest made me a lot weaker. If I get the other foot done, that's another four weeks of bedrest when I am supposed to be starting the garden. I'll miss the Spring Creek plant sale!

I built squirrel-baffling cages around several of my pumpkins this year, and I count it a success:



I got eight pumpkins, they got three, plus many unripe ones. And they got a few of my acorn squashes. Last year, I don't think they recognized the acorn squash as food. I thought maybe they learned to eat pumpkin from smelling jack-o-lanterns that had already been cut open for them, but they didn't realize that the other squashes were similar. But this year they attacked both.

For the cages, I stuck an odd number of stakes around each little green pumpkin and wove grapevine around the stakes until the pumpkin was hidden. It wouldn't stop a determined squirrel, but maybe it looked like a squirrel trap, or maybe it just made it enough harder to get that the squirrels were deflected to easier pickings. (My compost piles are full of easier pickings.)

Next year I'm going to make as many grapevine baskets as I can, to hide all my squash under.

Morning used to be get up, let the dogs out, start the coffee, let the dogs in, give them breakfast, let them out again, drink coffee and start thinking about the day. But Dutch hurt her foot and is not allowed to race around, so now the morning starts get up, take the cone off, put the leash on, walk the dog around the back yard until she pees.

When I got Dutch, she would not relieve herself on leash. She knew that peeing in the house was Bad, but apparently peeing near a person was Worse. She spent a long time alternately in the crate and leashed to me, and eventually she learned that peeing outside is Good, even when there is a person on the other end of the leash.

But apparently being on leash AND in the back yard is a completely different, confusing new situation, and peeing in this new situation might very well be Bad. So we walk around and around, while I chirp "Go pee!" and she tries to rush back into the house whenever we get near the steps.

Sometimes she'll squat and immediately stand up again, without peeing, so I think she knows what we're there for. She just can't bring herself to risk it.

Dogs' brains. Gotta love em.

( photo )

The Cameron Peak fire grew from 34,000 acres to 90,000 over the weekend. Ash is falling gently. The sun is an orange spot you have to be careful not to look at. I have two extra dogs because their house is in the fire area: ( extra dogs )

Newt thinks they smell funny. Dutch wants them to play with her. They are both quite old and not interested in shenanigans.

Sunday it got up to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Monday night it started to snow. The snow should slow the fire down, but it is only 4% contained.

I got some basil, tomatoes, and peppers, and covered the plants, but this might be the end of summer:

( harvest )