When Does a Weed Have Multiple Personalities?

When does a weed have multiple personalities?  When it thinks it's a flower, of course!  You have to be careful because some weeds are tricky.  They try to disguise themselves as flowers to fool you and thus, let them live. 

Notice this foliage with pretty purple flowers trying to hide behind the palm tree.  Fooled you too, huh!  This weed, or small tree depending how you look at it, will meet its end the next time we meet.  You can grow, but you cannot hide. 

First Battle Won

After the first few minutes of using my weed demolisher, all I could think about is what a fool I've been to have not bought one of these years ago.  It took about a half an hour but I got 2 sections of the backyard done.  The charger lost power and the second charger only had about 10 minutes left.  It had been a couple of weeks since it was charged.  I'll have to wait until Sunday to begin the front.

The gardener, (who I will refer to as "the idiot" from here on in) comes once a week to mow the lawn. He called later that day and told me I should spray the weeks with weed spray.  Let me just say for the record that I've sprayed enough weed spray on my weeds in the past 7 years to rival the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  Completely useless but I do it anyway just for the heck of it. 

Kills the toughest weeds, but not mine!

And let me clarify, that the idiot just drives around in his mower for 30 minutes and trims the lawn.  In Florida, the "landscapers" aren't required to do anything else unless you pay them an additional fee.  In the past, the idiot has taken out a chunk of cement from my driveway and knocked down my mailbox.  But he always has something helpful to say to me like, "you have weeds".  I'm so lucky to have found him!

Anyway, the weed whacker was a bit heavier than I anticipated and after I finished I went inside, had a cup of coffee that spilled all over the place because my hands were shaking so bad.  The next day, needless to say, I had sore arms.  But it beats a bad back anyday.

A Call to Action

Weeds popping up through the bricks

You may look at some of these pics and figure I haven't weeded in years, but actually it's only been a month since I tackled the job.

The weather was being uncooperative, a steady sunny 96 degrees the past few weeks, my usual course of action of pulling them out of the ground one by one, crippling my back for weeks, did not seem to be the smart move. As a 52 year old overweight smoker, I didn't want to have a coronary and fall dead in the middle of an evil green weed grave. So I went to the big orange store and spent more money on this project than I wanted to, and bought a metal contraption that I hoped would have the weeds shaking in their roots.

Meet my brand new Black & Decker Trimmer and Edger or Weapon of Weed Destruction.

Watch out weeds, we're coming to get you!

I stood in the orange store for about an hour checking out about 40 of these devices until settling on this piece of machinery. The very nice man who was having the same problem as me, chose a gas model. But I know better than to keep gasoline engines in my sweltering garage, so I chose the one with 2 chargers, each carrying about a 40 minute charge.

After charging them both for 8 hours apiece, I was ready to go...As soon as I put this machine together that is. It didn't look all that complicated when I first looked at it, 4 screws is not something I would normally need to call a support group for, but that one damn screw wouldn't go into that one damn hole. (Sounds like a very bad porn movie). I know there are sadistic people in the home improvement industry that design these easy to put together tools to make the average person feel like idiots, but I was determined. One hour and thirteen minutes later, sweat pouring off of me (hard work or hot flash?), me and my metal sidekick were ready to take on the world!

A Weed is not a Weed...

Before I begin, I need to clarify the nature of this Blog. This Blog is about the common (or uncommon) weeds found in your lawn and garden such as these pictured below


And not the type of weed some of us may have had some experience with in our teens and young adulthoods such as these


So, this Blog isn't about growing weed, it is about killing weeds (which after years of trying I'm sure is not even possible).

It is also about the everyday struggles of trying to maintain the upkeep of a house on a limited budget and with limited knowledge and hardly any knowhow.