April 11, 2006

Mowing Down The Onions

Yesterday I was finally shamed into taking care of the lawn. Actually, it happened on Sunday, but we were busy pretty much all day, so I took care of it yesterday. The front lawn wasn't too bad but the pathway to the front door required weeding. The back yard was a bitch. The back yard is on a fairly steep grade and the lawn mower has is not self-motivated (the engine only runs the motor, not the wheels) so I've got to power it up and across the grade. Add to that the fact that the grass had grown to nearly flowering height in a few patches, and it made for a long, exhausting day. My legs and arms are still feeling it now. I went to bed at something like 9:00.

I'm hoping that successive mows go a little easier. With less tall grass to negotiate through, it should take a bit less brute force to get the job done. At least this wasn't as miserable the mowing experiences I had back at The Estate At Louisville, although it was more physically demanding. I can certainly use the exercise.

While weeding the front walkway, I found what looked like wild onions growing in the yard. A glance around revealed that they were growing all over the place. Some were growing near a dandelion that I dug up; it had small while bulbs and long, thin, green shoots. It smelled great, like chives or garlic. I briefly considered eating the shoots but decided against it when I realized that I had no real idea what the plant was -- onions or shallots would be fine, but there are other plants out there that might be less beneficial to the human digestive tract. There did not seem to be any of these wild onion-bulb things in the back yard. I'd post a picture but they all got mowed down yesterday. A little poking around on the web suggests these may be called "potato onions" which would have been perfectly OK to eat, but I'm not regretting my decision to avoid eating these things until and unless I get better information than some random website.

The Wife is taking the lead on finding a realtor, and hopefully with a lawn in shape and a cleaned-up garage, the biggest bits of unsightliness from the home will be resolved and we can present an attractive house to the market. The sooner the house sells, onions or no, the sooner we can go back to California!

It's a good thing The Wife is working on the realtor front. I need to get back to the practice today, but there are other competing concerns -- two teaching gigs require some attention today, too.

2 comments:

Pamela said...

Mowing down the onions would be a cool song title. Of course you would have to change it to Mowin' Down the Onions around these parts!

Anonymous said...

The weeds you discovered could be Nut Sedge. I had this in my lawn, and it required a couple applications of a special herbicide to eradicate it.