Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

People are weird.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

In after Baud. Damn.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

The lights are all blinking red.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Open Thread

Open Thread

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Spring is finally here, so I am prepping the yard and getting things in order. I’m putting up a fence around the back yard to keep the dogs in and the critters out, so the tree folks came and trimmed all the pine trees up to a manageable height and got rid of decades of dead wood and growth. It looks a lot better and my yard seems much bigger. Also, they ripped out the dying bushes in the front of the house and took out the dead rhododendron, and I planted a bunch of evergreen groundcover with two decorative trees. Will be glad when that is done, but it already looks so much better.

Next up is plowing the garden and framing it. This year I am throwing down some railroad ties to help separate the yard from the garden.

Finally, the winter ceasefire with the dandelions has come to a close, and we are now engaging on several fronts. There has been a major push from the south, east, and west, and after a number of successful missions, I can report that the enemy suffered many casualties. This isn’t over by a long shot, and it is obvious to me that they are using the neighboring lawns as staging areas, but armed with my Fiskars, I think another Friedman Unit should do it. I have ruled out the use of chemical weapons for now.

Also, Pens, Game 7 tonight.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    Texas Dem

    I hope all of you saw Lawrence O’Donnell scorch Trump, the birthers, and NBC Entertainment. Was so damned good I feel like lighting up a cigarette, and I don’t smoke.

  4. 4.

    mr. whipple

    I have ruled out the use of chemical weapons for now.

    Once you go chemical, you’ll never go back.

  5. 5.

    johnny's mom

    Feed the Fiskars, starve BP. Besides, all that stuff is carcinogenic. You’ll sleep better knowing your little angels aren’t running and rolling in it.

  6. 6.

    jl

    @slag: I think it was the other sister, Eva.

    As for Cole, he’s not invading his neighbors’ staging areas, lawns? Odd.

  9. 9.

    Roger Moore

    This isn’t over by a long shot, and it is obvious to me that they are using the neighboring lawns as staging areas,

    I’m sorry, but as long as the Taliban dandelions can find a safe haven in a neighboring country yard, you’re fighting an unwinnable war.

  10. 10.

    Cat Lady

    The Bruins power(less) play is going to kill me. They’re 0 fer the season, and they haven’t won a game 7 since Bobby Orr it seems. I remember when every other car had a bumper sticker that said Jesus Saves… Esposito Scores On The Rebound. Sigh.

  11. 11.

    burnspbesq

    One of the benefits of living in SoCal is that something good to eat is in season pretty much all year round. I went out to the back yard this morning to check on the dogs, and came in with a handful of blueberries.

  12. 12.

    JPL

    True Green has an ad on your site in case you change your mind. They have a free analysis and a special price the first month of treatment. Hmmm…

  14. 14.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    i got old people problems.

    someone stole my underpads.

    to be more accurate, my sister in law stole credit for purchasing the underpads for an elder relative who uses them for little leaks when the call of the wild comes at a quarter past.

    its always the little things like this, though. stupid stuff that i would seem petty for bringing up in irl, or here for that matter…

    but. it. pisses. me. off.

    i just want to tell her, we don’t have to like her, she’s family. and be done with it.

    so i consider myself grateful i was able to help(those things are expensive in any sort of quantity)and try to find my inner gelassenheit

  18. 18.

    slag

    @jl: Wait. You mean they’re not the same person?!

    Kidding. You’re right. I did get them confused. Truth be told, I have no business making pop culture references in the first place. Don’t know what I was thinking.

  21. 21.

    Joeyess

    I’m putting up a fence around the back yard to keep the dogs in and the critters out

    ummm……. I have a fence. Spent $1700 on it. Those critters you speak of? Good luck
    with that.

  23. 23.

    Shoemaker-Levy 9

    I mentioned this over in the other open thread but the Weather Channel is reporting widespread death and destruction in Alabama right now. Here on the left coast I just caught the first sixty seconds of Diane Sawyer and she was just giddy about the impending “fairy tale” wedding.

    Forget the Republicans, forget the Tea Party, forget Wall Street. Mass media journalists are the lowest forms of life on the planet. The lot of them.

  25. 25.

    Violet

    Next up is plowing the garden

    According to a class on soil, compost and mulch I attended, plowing isn’t really very good for the soil. It disturbs the soil food web and makes it harder on your plants to do their thing. You are better off adding compost and mulch and allowing them to change the soil over time. Then when you plant, disturb it as little as possible to plant seeds and dig up only the area where you are transplanting for seedlings.

    I’ve been following his advice this gardening season, including using a lot of very high quality native compost, and I have to say my vegetable garden is looking the best its looked in a long time.

  26. 26.

    TooManyPaulWs

    @Shoemaker-Levy 9: I apologize about how our mainstream media seems… well, unfocused at best or brain-dead at worst. I hope you don’t have any family in trouble in the path of that storm region. I have folks in Auburn, I hope they’re okay.

  27. 27.

    burnspbesq

    @Shoemaker-Levy 9:

    I mentioned this over in the other open thread but the Weather Channel is reporting widespread death and destruction in Alabama right now. Here on the left coast I just caught the first sixty seconds of Diane Sawyer and she was just giddy about the impending “fairy tale” wedding.

    I’m surprised that you find this surprising. Sawyer is giving her audience what it wants. This is how one sells advertising, by attracting and keeping eyeballs. It’s rational profit-maximizing behavior.

  34. 34.

    stuckinred

    @JPL: The weather channel site for Athens says 85% chance of rain and storms. Hit the “hourly” button and none has more than a 30% chance!

  35. 35.

    Violet

    @stuckinred:
    Depends on what you are trying to do. In my area, most people plant vegetables in raised beds because our soil is typically very poor quality clay and we get lots of rain, which would mean they’d do very poorly and then drown if put into the ground.

    Aeration of soil is important, but it can also be accomplished by other means. The dandelions, for instance, are an indication that the soil needs to be broken up. They have very deep tap roots and are in places where the soil is compacted. Dump a thin layer (half inch) of high quality compost onto that area three times in a year, and come back a year later and see if it still has dandelions. Probably not, or at least not very many, as the compost will work on the soil and increase its quality, thus reducing the need for aeration.

  36. 36.

    jl

    Almost forgot a very important controversy from last year.

    I will suggest it just this once, and never again (unless circumstances change). Probably what will happen is that Cole will yell at me.

    But, considering that Cole’s kind commenters explained last summer how you could eat the flowers, and baby fruits, as well as the bigger fruits, maybe Cole should try a Z*******, or some other summer s*****.

    note: bad words are masked with asterisks, for the sake of the children reading this family blog.

  37. 37.

    hilts

    @Shoemaker-Levy 9:

    Here on the left coast I just caught the first sixty seconds of Diane Sawyer and she was just giddy about the impending “fairy tale” wedding. Forget the Republicans, forget the Tea Party, forget Wall Street. Mass media journalists are the lowest forms of life on the planet. The lot of them.

    Last Friday, Jessica Yellin spent the final 10 minutes of John King USA discussing the royal wedding nonsense. The news anchors and reporters who will cover this idiotic event are a disgrace to journalism and are pure, unadulterated scum.

  39. 39.

    RossInDetroit

    Weather’s been lousy here but not deadly. The only fatality was the power at the building where I work. 5.5 hours of outage played hell with operations. Fortunately it also played hell with the 3 TV news crews doing their best to break up an important meeting. Serves ’em right. Flush ’em out and lock it down. Buh-bye!

  40. 40.

    BGK

    Even though our vegetable season is winding down, the 90+ weather is great for my potted herbs. My two basil plants are keeping me in pesto multiple times a week. I’ve also got Italian parsley, Thai basil, sage, tarragon, oregano, rosemary, thyme the size of a hedge, cilantro, and mint which will probably engulf my house by the weekend.

    I’ve also got a plague of tiny, lime-green inchworms. Or caterpillars. Or something. The basil is large enough that they’re not making too bad of a dent, the mint laughs it off, but my cilantro is getting demolished.

    I doused everything with insecticidal soap and neem oil, and it doesn’t seem to have helped. I have no compunctions about going chemical. I’m enjoying the abundance of fresh herbs too much to see them ruined by these sonsofbitches. Anyone know what these are, and how to get rid of them? I tried picking them off but they’re sticky and there’s too many of them.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    Photos, please, of the pets outside the newly landscaped Cole home.

    We will be the judges of whether it looks better, thank you very much.

  43. 43.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Shoemaker-Levy 9:

    Mass media journalists are the lowest forms of life on the planet. The lot of them.

    Old news.

    @Violet: We stopped tilling and started doing this a couple of years ago. Much better results, especially when using mushroom compost.

  44. 44.

    PeakVT

    @Dave S.: He has to make sure it’s not the #3 dandelion. There’s an endless supply of those.

    This year I am throwing down some railroad ties to help separate the yard from the garden.

    Mmmm, creosote…

  47. 47.

    burnspbesq

    @BGK:

    Those tiny, lime-green things sound like gypsy moth caterpillars (which are very bad news), but those normally live in the trees.

  50. 50.

    Anne Laurie

    Next up is plowing the garden and framing it. This year I am throwing down some railroad ties to help separate the yard from the garden.

    If you’re going to that much trouble anyway, take Violet’s advice: Cover the ‘garden’ area with several layers of newspapers, put down a coating of mulch, and plant your veggies through the paper. This will save you the effort of plowing now and weeding later. Tearing up the turf just encourages the neighbors’ dandelion seeds & other invaders. This will also let you target water to the tomatoes later… or, for that matter, make it easier for you to run soaker hoses, which I highly recommend, too also.

  51. 51.

    jeff

    The PDF is in layers and the birfers are astonished that the greatest conspiracy of all time left all these artifacts of their perfidy; on the other hand, they note that the conspiracy has had up to a decade to perfect the illusion.

    One guy states:

    The document has been manipulated. It is so obvious even amateurs can see it. Notice the number “1” which is on a separate layer is pixellated, the other part of the number is not pixellated. That doesn’t happen by itself. Someone’s been messing around. I agree something is wrong. Photobucket

    Another astutely notes:

    What I don’t understand is that some of the characters on the birth certificate seem to have “dithering”, i.e., they are made up of a bunch of different colors or shades, like the “1” in your example above. At least I think that’s correct terminology. Every document that I’ve seen straight out of a scanner looked like this.

    Some letters in the birth certificate, however, don’t. Some are very “flat” and look like they’ve been desaturated and the contrast has been increased. But why would some be that way and others not, unless the contrast on the original was “pushed” somehow, and then extra letters with dithering were added later? And if that was so, it seems like it would completely wash the light background out when they pushed the contrast on the original text.

    I’m an amateur photographer, and I’ve worked with lots of different types of scanned images, and different types of image manipulation. I have NEVER seen two characters side by side scan so differently.

  53. 53.

    jaxtra

    dandelions are actually very tasty, don’t waste your time eradicating them just eat them. buy the book “all new square foot gardening”. you can thank me later

  54. 54.

    cyd

    it is obvious to me that they are using the neighboring lawns as staging areas

    Clearly, you cannot allow them such safe havens. Send in the drones.

  55. 55.

    CaseyL

    I’ll catch O’Donnell at 8:00, which is when his show cycles through again here on the West Coast.

    Right now I’m watching 2 Mules for Sister Sarah, a classic post-modern Western, with Shirley McClaine and Clint Eastwood. I love this movie far more than is seemly.

  56. 56.

    Shoemaker-Levy 9

    @burnspbesq:

    I’m surprised that you find this surprising

    I neither said nor implied that I was surprised.

    @TooManyPaulWs:

    I have no family or friends close to this. I do have a niece in Missouri who seems to be within a hundred miles or so of this stuff night after night. Best wishes to your family and to Hell with Diane Sawyer.

    @hilts:

    I just find it ironic that I, a far left pinko communist, remember the sacrifice that the Founders made to rid our shores of the worthless vermin in the British Royal Family, and the supposedly patriotic pieces of shit in our press corps do not. When I’m dictator Sawyer and the rest will have Article One Section 9 of the Constitution branded on their bodies with hot irons, then they’ll be put on display nude in the public square.

  58. 58.

    Anne Laurie

    @BGK:

    I’ve also got a plague of tiny, lime-green inchworms. Or caterpillars. Or something. The basil is large enough that they’re not making too bad of a dent, the mint laughs it off, but my cilantro is getting demolished.

    If the pots are small enough, the other solution I’ve read is to put a trashbag over them & blast the plants with a hose, wash the critters off by force. Preferably after moving the pot to a driveway, or away from other plants you don’t want to blast the bugs into. I did use this one year to salvage my basil after we came home from a week’s vacation and found it overrun with aphids, but YMMV…

  59. 59.

    slag

    @mr. whipple: Not necessarily true. Last season, my neighbor’s tree had a scale infestation and, lacking any option other than cutting it down, we decided to go with a systemic insecticide that killed the scales off for the season. The package said that we should re-apply every successive year before the tree buds, but we held off this year to see whether the beast would return. And so far so good. Hopefully, the tree will retain it’s self-defenses and the first will be the last of the chemical we have to use.

    So, it seems it can be done. You just gotta restrain yourself and sometimes ignore the directions.

  60. 60.

    JPL

    O’Donnell is right. As much as I like Chuck, Friday Night Lights and The Office, it might be time to turn the TV off.

  61. 61.

    dmsilev

    I have ruled out the use of chemical weapons for now.

    I say you take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

  63. 63.

    RossInDetroit

    My granny used to kill bugs with nicotine. Cigar butts soaked in water and sprayed on. Claimed it was harmless unless you’re an insect. But I guess you wouldn’t want to treat anything edible that way.

  64. 64.

    Jay S

    @tjmn: Sorry, Weedhound is a fairly limited tool. I broke mine after a couple of years and I found it very hard on my back, probably because it wasn’t a good fit for my height. It will jamb easily and is especially vulnerable to pebbles. Grandpa’s Weeder is a much more effective tool for me and gets out more of the root as well. It can jamb, but seems easier to clear when it does.

  65. 65.

    CaseyL

    @JPL: I go through periods of watching TV news regularly and then not at all. The not-at-all periods are getting longer, though; lately I get my global news from BBC and AJE on-line.

    John, regarding the dandelions, I have two words for you: Hungry. Goats.

  66. 66.

    hilts

    @Shoemaker-Levy 9:

    I know what you mean. I hate seeing valuable airtime being pissed away on meaningless nonsense like this stupid royal wedding. I wish there were a skilled computer hacker who could jam the signals of CNN, etc and prevent this fucking wedding ceremony from polluting our airwaves.

  67. 67.

    stuckinred

    @hilts: What a bunch of bullshit. If you don’t like it don’t watch it. Jesus, motherfuckers will whine about anything.

  68. 68.

    MikeJ

    @WaterGirl: Getting people in an apple store to perform in lockstep is like shooting fish in a barrel.

    Next video: getting people in an apple store to administer electric shocks to those who express doubt about Steve Jobs divinity.

  69. 69.

    RossInDetroit

    @hilts:

    valuable airtime

    Seriously? Actual air has more value than air full of commercial broadcasts. Shut it down and take a walk.

  71. 71.

    Jay S

    @Jay S: Revised to add, John’s Fiskars looks like an improved Weed Hound, with gripping jaws in place of the nails. I’d still take Grandpa’s for price and performance.

  73. 73.

    Shoemaker-Levy 9

    @hilts:

    I wish there were a skilled computer hacker who could jam the signals of CNN

    Wow, what a great idea.

    Anonymous, if you are reading this, you know what to do.

  74. 74.

    hilts

    @stuckinred: @RossInDetroit:

    There was a time when news divisions believed in giving viewers information they needed to know and not shamelessly pandering to the lowest common denominator. When news divisions are shutting down foreign bureaus and cutting their staffs it’s reckless and irresponsible to piss away money to cover this bullshit news story.

  75. 75.

    RossInDetroit

    @hilts:
    I see your point about the decline of network news. It’s not what it once was, but what was it before? In my opinion the motivation of broadcast news has always been the same as entertainment programs: attract eyeballs to the commercials. I expect little from commercial news and I’m never disappointed.
    I’ve been a TV abstainer for 35 years so take my opinion in that context.

  77. 77.

    Svensker

    @PeakVT:

    This year I am throwing down some railroad ties to help separate the yard from the garden.
    Mmmm, creosote…

    I was gonna say that. You don’t want to use creosoted ties near your veggies. Very toxic stuff.

  83. 83.

    Violet

    Agreeing with the others re: railroad ties. Very toxic @Anne Laurie: and not good for vegetables. Stay clear of treated wood as well for the same reason. The stuff they use to treat it can be bad for you. Try cinder blocks or other concrete blocks. Or, if you want wood, try cedar.

    I’m currently using cedar shingles. They’re pretty cheap and if you use a small stick of bamboo to prop them up, they work great. Even though they’re thin, you should get several years of use out of them before you have to replace them. If you want to spend more money you can buy cedar boards to line the garden bed.

    If you’re going to that much trouble anyway, take Violet’s advice: Cover the ‘garden’ area with several layers of newspapers, put down a coating of mulch, and plant your veggies through the paper. This will save you the effort of plowing now and weeding later. Tearing up the turf just encourages the neighbors’ dandelion seeds & other invaders. This will also let you target water to the tomatoes later… or, for that matter, make it easier for you to run soaker hoses, which I highly recommend, too also.

    Alternative for newspaper is cardboard. Just don’t use colored/shiny cardboard; stick with the plan brown stuff. It’s thicker and doesn’t blow away as you are trying to make the bed. Try layer of mulch, then cardboard, then dirt/compost and plant. Or just cardboard and dirt/compost and plant. The mulch is good for the soil and improving soil quality, but you don’t absolutely need to do it if you are trying to save money.

  84. 84.

    Anne Laurie

    @Violet:Wet the newspapers down as soon as you spread them, and they won’t blow around. My teacher was a certified master gardener (Canadian), and she thought cardboard took too long to break down & was a pain to chop through when putting in deep-rooted plants. First time I tried her method, I ran out of newspaper, so half the bed got newspaper & half the expensive ‘gro-thru weed barrier’ landscape cloth the Spousal Unit had picked up on an impulse. It’s coming up on the third spring since then, and there is absolutely NO difference in the plants (irises, daylilies, mini-daffodils, phlox) planted through the two different materials…

  85. 85.

    Gian

    late to the open thread. I’m curious, does anyone else think that we fought a revolution to get away from the damn british royalty and I don’t give a rat’s tail about royal weddings?

  86. 86.

    Violet

    @Anne Laurie:
    I guess it depends how you’re doing the bed. I do cardboard, then dirt on top and plant into the dirt. The cardboard is purely for weed suppression. No need to punch any holes in it and it’ll disintegrate eventually. My climate is generally warm and humid, so things might break down faster here than they do up north.

    If you want to use the weed suppression material on top of the bed, and punching through it to plant, then yeah newspaper is probably a better way to go. Easier to break through.

    The weed cloth seems to be a real waste of money if you’ve got newspaper or cardboard lying around. Interesting you’ve had a real world test.

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    @burnspbesq:

    I went out to the back yard this morning to check on the dogs, and came in with a handful of blueberries.

    I hate you.

    That is all.

  91. 91.

    bob h

    You’re doing it in between the T-storms and tropical deluges?
    My NJ Spring has been a very uninviting outside affair so far.

  93. 93.

    Paul in KY

    @joeyess: As long as the lawn is green & contains no thistles, I don’t care what it is.

    You’d love to have me as a neighbor.

  94. 94.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    it is obvious to me that they are using the neighboring lawns as staging areas

    I hear you. The neighbors to one side of me do no lawn maintenance at all – which is OK in that it makes my pathetic lawn look better in comparison – but at this time of the year their lawn does look like a goddam dandelion preserve. I’ve taken to sneaking over there and putting a round of weed-n-feed on their lawn when I do mine.

  95. 95.

    HW3

    I have ruled out the use of chemical weapons for now.

    I made major inroads in my fight last year with vinegar. It simply kills em dead. Then reseed once they’ve been wiped out and the lawn is green again.
    Of course no cure for the neighbors…

  96. 96.

    Julie

    I have a dandelion weeder that works really well–the fiskars won’t work because they’re perennials. The tool looks like a snake’s tongue, forked at the end.

    The best weed treatment I’ve ever used is corn gluten meal, it’s a pre-emergent herbicide and so it keeps new dandelions from sprouting once you’ve gotten rid of the old ones. It also works really well for henbit. You buy it at cattle feed stores. I used more than you’re supposed to, about a 50 lb bag for about 1500 sq ft of lawn, because my spreader is crap.

    It’s organic and it works better than any chemicals I’ve tried for lawns. Also, it’s a fertilizer.

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