Weeding...and Other Super Fun Things!

Our yard is constantly attacked by weeds. We live next to a big cow pasture in one of the windiest areas of California. It seems that by the time we make it around the yard (front, back and side) and pull all the weeds...they are already popping up again. We get all kinds of weeds; low amaranth, little bittercress, California burclover, spurweed, bermuda buttercup, mousear chickweed, white clover, common cocklebur, dandelion, fiddleneck, cutleaf geranium, common groundsel, horseweed, tumble mustard, bristly oxtongue, scarlet pimpernel, broadleaf plantain, buckhorn plantain, annual sowthistle, creeping spurge, Canada thistle, large crabgrass, prarie cupgrass, goosegrass....and my all time favorite, Blessed Milkthistle (silybum marianum).



Blessed Milthistle, such a nice name for such a horrifying noxious weed. According to Wikipedia (the modern-age encyclopedia of everything...if its there, it must be true!), Blessed Milkthistle has been grown as a medicinal plant in monestarial gardens since ancient times...and more recently, the extract is now also being used in Rockstar Energy Drink as an energy enhancing agent. Maybe I should call Rockstar...I have a yard full of this crap they can come harvest, heck I wouldn't even charge them for it, as long as they remove it!

Whenever I see the darling little sprouts of the Blessed Milkthistle...I cringe! I can't even pull the seedlings out with leather gloves on, the thorns are so dang hard. So usually I let it grow a bit and then hack it out of the ground with the shovel and use tongs to pick it up and throw it away! I swear the sight of this weed sends shivers down my spine!

But on Sunday I found the coolest tool at Lowes...the UpRoot® Weed & Root Remover by Fiskars.



I bought one (for about $26) and thought I would give it a try. We have so many weeds and the constant bending, kneeling and pulling is horrible. I actually wore through the fingertips of my gloves a couple of weekends ago on a marathon 5 hour weed pulling session!

But I digress...again...we tried out the UpRoot and were actually stunned by how well it worked! First you jab the tool into the grond over the weed, then you step on the side of the tool and rock to the side, which pulls out the weed...root and all...then, and here is the best part, there is a slide on the handle that you use to forcefully eject the weed off of the end of the tool. I was shooting those damned weeds accross the yard and into the garbage can like I was in the NBA! Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it was fun! So fun, in fact, later that night after watching TV, I was tempted to go outside and pull weeds...for fun...are you getting what I am saying here! This is absolutely crazy!

I sent Fiskars an email Monday morning letting them know how much I love this tool:

“I LOVE this tool...I bought one yesterday and it is so easy to use, and works wonderfully on low braodleaf weeds! Our yard is almost overrun with braodleaf weeds (we live right behind a cow pasture...and the weeds are a huge problem), but this made pulling them out so easy! And no bending or stooping or waddling around on my knees! What a godsend! At 9:30pm last night, with nothing good on TV, I even considered going outside and pulling weeds...it was so fun! Crazy, I know, I never thought I would say I wanted to go weed the yard! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this! Thank you so much! Fiskars are just the best tools...I have a lot of crafting Fiskars, and now won't consider anything less for my gardening tools!”

So...I just wanted to put this out there, for all to see...weeding can be fun! So get to it! You wouldn't want your neighbors to complain....(more about that at a later date!)

PS: The ladybug pictures below are from the weeding marathon....and the ladybug on the bottom right is crawling on a Broadleaf Plantain...actually a very pretty weed I considered keeping in the yard...