P(l)aying House!

Death looms around us
Monday, July 30, 2007

On the weeds, that is. I grew up in a country where weeds, or "sagbut", were harmless. Innocuous. Insignificant. We played on them and didn't really think much of them. They were just... THERE.

Here in the US, weeds are "to be rid of", "avoided" and "by all means, removed!". I never really understood it until we got the house. To make your home re-sellable, you need to take good care of the house and that does NOT exclude the yard. You let your eyes stroll all over your front yard and back yard and just when you think everything is perfect (insert angelic music here), you see something jut out like unshaved armpit hair. It totally destroys the scene. And because I married a geek, he explained everything to me like a science. Why they're there, why they need to be removed and how to remove them. Not that he's an expert or anything. He's just as willing to experiment as I am. So last week, as I had blogged, we sprayed some Weedbegone on them annoying grass-cousins and true enough, they started to whither. Our favorite play gesture was while pointing a finger at the dead weed we'd shout "Death!" Haha.
Yesterday, we did some unrooting. It was a mistake buying only one set of weed removers because I liked doing it more than Joen did! It might have been a fun thing to do but with the number of weeds all over our front yard, it was a painstaking task. I appreciated bigger weeds because at least they were easier to remove. It's those small ones that are tricky. You kind of have to dig your fingers a little, trace the stems and feel them thicken towards the root. Next time, I am getting my own set. Joen finished up at the back yard where there weren't as many weeds as there were up front but they were bigger. This week, he will be doing some fertilizing and whatnot. He wants to get this over and done with so bad.

See those gaps? There used to be weeds in there.