Weed Eater Landscaping

First a confession, I generally take a live-and-let-live approach to landscaping. If a volunteer plant is attractive and adds visual interest to our humble plot in suburbia, I spare it from the wrath of the weed eater. Over the years, I've done especially well at nurturing acacia trees. The finest example is a volunteer winging upward from our front terrace. At nearly 20 feet high with branches spreading 15 feet across, this tree makes a valuable contribution to our privacy by partially blocking the view from the street and keeping the neighbors at bay.

By contrast, when it comes to backyard landscaping, the weed eater has been an essential tool. Of all the utilitarian gifts my father has bestowed on us over the years, this is the most useful. In a space roughly 80 feet wide by 15 feet deep, the weed eater tames unruly spring bunch grasses and wild blackberry canes in a matter of hours.

Preventing undesirable plants - some call them weeds - from regenerating has become a priority this spring due to the El Nino weather system affecting the California coast this past winter. As bunch grasses approached waist height during March, I realized quick action was needed. While the weed eater was just the ticket for getting down to soil level, the only way to eliminate plant regeneration was to dig them out by the roots. This needed to be done while the ground was still soft from recent rains, otherwise heavy artillery such as a multi-tined rototiller would be required.

On a bright unseasonably warm Saturday morning, I set upon the offending roots with a sharp spade and began heaving root-laden clods of dirt onto the back patio. Both arms and back as well as feet received an intensive workout during the intervening hours as concrete slowly disappeared beneath upended grasses. Stubborn root networks required persistent shovel work and digging in a circular pattern around submerged clumps while exerting downward force with both feet balanced on the recurved top edge of the blade. Final clean up involved transferring the grasses, roots and attached earth into a large compost receptacle where wind-born seeds could be prevented from sailing away to colonize neighboring yards.

With grasses tamed, the most noteworthy feature of our backyard is a persimmon tree which lights up in reddish-orange hues during the fall months leading up to harvest time. In recent years, the tree has displayed impressive fecundity bestowing dozens, if not hundreds, of fuyu persimmons on us during the months of October and November. For years, it appeared to thrive on our benign neglect.

Then two summers ago, I became curious as to why the bunch grasses grew so luxuriantly in the middle of the yard adjacent to the patio while at the sides ground cover would die back leaving barren stubble by the end of the season. I decided to investigate. After days of scrutiny, I noticed the area populated by waist high bunch grasses seemed to be continually damp. Not long after, as I cranked the water spigot located on the back wall of the house trying to stop the last few drips falling to the concrete, I had an epiphany. The leaky faucet was responsible not only for the grasses, but also the abundant persimmons!

On the downside, this blew away my theory of benign neglect and necessitated periodic watering by hand. In an effort to conserve and go green, we placed a five gallon bucket in the downstairs shower to catch cold water during the 45-second warm up phase. Every two or three days, the contents of the unwieldy bucket were splashed around the base of the persimmon tree. Subsequent fall persimmon harvests have validated our new water management initiative.