Productive Weekend

I feel like I got a lot done this weekend:

• Walked in the State Fair parade for the Re-elect Jason Marks Campaign.
  
• 19 new plants in the ground (Plants of the SW had a great sale), and requisite drippers put into place.
  
• 7 pounds of tomatoes harvested and turned into 6 pints of salsa. I can't believe how frustrating it is to can stuff, and I keep trying it again thinking MAYBE this time I actually have enough tomatoes to make a worthwhile amount of salsa... but no. At least it tastes good.
• Ran 3 miles.

If you're really paying attention, you may be asking "Hey, weren't you supposed to run a 10k today?" The answer is that I had been training for a 10k, but I had to abandon it two weeks ago due to allergies, and then couldn't get back into it because my left leg became incredibly sore. It's all better now, so the next running goal is the Duke City Marathon Relay in October where I'll do a 6.2-mile leg.

Drip System: Phase I complete

I've spent endless hours in the last couple of weeks converting our in-ground sprinkler system to a drip system. Most of it was pretty easy, especially laying the tubing and putting drip emitters in the tubing. We had to build the entire head assembly, which includes an electric valve, filter, backflow prevention valve and pressure regulator. I was expecting that half of those things would have already been part of the sprinkler system, but they weren't. It would have been easier and less leaky to get a plumber for that part, but hopefully we can tighten it up and get rid of the leaks now. This is just Phase I, because I still need to lay a whole new system in the backyard, where there currently is no sprinkler system. It will involve more digging of trenches to lay tubing, but there will be no need for a plumber because all of the valves will attach to the faucet.

Unrelated to that, yesterday was the third Tuesday in a row that I had to fill up my motorcycle tank. Which means that I'm riding it a lot more than I used to (and I haven't been on any joyrides recently). Maybe it's because of the cost of gas... at 70mpg, I really do use a lot less gas compared to my 25mpg car. But it may just be because of the large saddle bags I added recently, so I actually can carry stuff around and stash my riding jacket in the bag.

"I'm a tenured professor of archeology..."

That's a line from Indiana Jones. Now that Hubbers just got tenure, I think I'll be using it a lot. Apparently, having tenure means that he has a lot more time to spend building block walls and shoveling rocks... and not in a way that helps him find artifacts.

We've thought about re-landscaping our yard for years. We've done plenty of planting of trees, but at some point we stopped watering the grass and didn't do much to replace it. Finally, the yard will be more than a dust bowl.

Grass

Finally, I have a schedule for converting our water hungry ex-lawn into a xeriscape. Somehow, if I can write things down as a nice little list of things to do, then I can get it done. We've decided to replace most of the lawn area with low-water buffalo and blue grama grass. This will also involve some levelling of the yard, adding rock to the edge near the wall and planting lots more xeric plants.

As expected, the toughest part about this project is removing the existing (mostly dead) grass in order to put in the low-water grass. Even xeric plants require daily water when they are first put into the ground, which can revive the dead lawn. So here's the rather anti-intuitive grass replacement plan that has been recommended:

1) Water the yard daily until the grass greens and the weeds sprout. I started today and will continue this for the next 2 weeks.
2) Kill grass and weeds with Roundup (there are arguments for and against the environmental friendliness of this chemical) and wait a couple of weeks for roots and everything to decompose.
3) Rototill all the dead stuff under, and add compost.
4) Plant the new grass and water it.

The ironic part about this is that I was going to replace the grass two summers ago while I was unemployed. So we stopped watering the grass in order to kill it, but then it rained every day in July which completely re-greened the lawn. At that point it seemed like too much work to try to kill a thriving lawn. Now it turns out that I have to revive the grass anyway, because you can't kill dormant grass.

Spending this many hours doing yard work has never been my cup of tea. However, this year I haven't been rock climbing at all. So I decided that I'll finish the xeriscaping which will give me plenty of outdoors exercise instead of rock climbing this summer. It's also a good diversion from all the hours I spend sitting indoors. Once it's all done, I can enjoy my low-maintenance yard and do more exciting outdoors stuff.