The fire season has been nonexistent, which should translate into more free time, but it hasn’t. Most of the projects I had thought to accomplish haven’t even been started, let alone finished. We should get the rest of the dog yard fenced this Friday and that will be nice. The irrigation is flowing and just keeping up with the lawn using a borrowed reel mower is about all we can manage.
We had Melissa from the Ravalli County Weed District come by and identify all our succession vegetation for us. Mostly we got mustard. She did point out some Canada thistle, which we knew about, but she also noted that we had some field bindweed growing amongst the landscaping on the south side of the house. Everyone, even brother Jeb, makes an ugly face when I mention the field bindweed, so I tend to believe it will be hard to get rid of. Fortunately we haven’t seen it in the pasture yet, and I can only hope we don’t. The grass is relatively well established in there and healthy, always the best defense against invasion.
Melissa recommended we use Roundup on the mustard patch around the stable, on the two potentially harmful gigantor nightshade plants we discovered, and on the area where we found the field bindweed. I don’t much like the idea of using that stuff but I don’t know much about it. I asked around a bit and word on the street is that it is has no adverse effects on humans, nonetheless I’m rather hesitant. After a little Wikipedia indoctrination, I’m even more so.
I don’t see mustard as much of a threat, and the nightshade we may be able to beat back with a pair of trimmers. Our neighbor Rod down the road has offered to help us to spot spray the Canada thistle with some Milestone. Brandi dug up most of the sow thistle and a couple more seasons of that should take care of it. She also has been cutting seed heads off the Canada and I’ve been pulling the bindweed before it flowers in some attempt at control.
Getting out of the weeds a bit, the big news in our world is that Brandi has accepted a permanent position at Rocky Mountain Laboratory. That means we’ll be sticking around the Bitterroot for awhile, and I like the feel of it. It gives us the confidence to really invest ourselves in the smallholding and the community for the long term and allows us freedom to consider a greater range of possibilities. Now I can imagine working this place over the course of ten or twenty years. It’s exciting.
In the mean time I’ll just try to keep up with Keegan and the lawn mowing, which may have just got easier since the irrigation has quit again. Guess I shouldn’t have opened those valves in the pasture.
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