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growing pains

So there are some things that are hard to grow, or hard to make grow, at least the way you want them to. Grass is an example. And then there are other things that grow on their own and all too readily. What I wonder is, why the complicated plants are the ones we want, while those that are entirely self-sufficient are deemed unacceptable and indeed deserving of extermination? It seems like someone put the puritans in charge here. As you probably guessed, these thoughts were motivated by me spending a good portion of the afternoon today weeding the lawn, where all of a sudden a large number of ferocious predatory plants has begun attacking my poor defenseless grasses. I don't know if I just let things slip, or if they really did just all spring up in a short space of time: I hadn't been weeding before, but that's because I never saw any weeds! I worked hard today though, and watered grass and weeds alike with much sweat of my brow, and I did about a quarter of the whole lawn. The weeds aren't so bad, are they?

And speaking of things that grow out of control, we have this Russian Sage stuff in our side yard, and I guess it likes it there, because it is as you would say thriving. Which is fine I guess, since apparently somebody missed one and it's somehow not a weed. It has purple flowers. It pretty much took over the whole bed that it's in by the expedient of sending out long roots underground and then springing them up suddenly as new plants. That's all well and good, but this morning I noticed a disturbing escalation in the sage's spread: it sent a root down through the basement foundation and sprung a new plant right out of the wall! That doesn't seem right, somehow. If nothing else it demonstrates to us in graphic detail why our basement floor gets wet when it rains.

Unrelated: boing boing brings the world news of the machinama talk show This Spartan Life, the coolest new internet phenomenon of the week. Check it out.

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