Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: yard

  • Spring Has Sprung, Except for the Dead Things

    I had someone over to look at the yard yesterday. Along with several plants, bushes and vines, it looks like we’ve lost 4 large trees (10-15 years old) from the unusual frost this year. I can try having the trees severely chopped back in hopes that perhaps they will revive, but she did not hold out a lot of hope for them.

    What sucks is that, beyond the expense of removing them, because of their location it is highly unlikely to get much of the root structure out at all. This means that nothing large can replace them as it will have no room to root itself. This is going to have a real impact on the privacy of the backyard.

    So perhaps I should try the chopping them back route? It is unlikely to work and will be quite ugly in the meantime, but there might be a chance of it coming back.

    I wish I could afford to completely redo the hardscape out there. It was very well done and has held up beautifully, but is not at all to my personal taste.

  • There Must Be Some Toros in the Atmosphere

    It is cold.

    It is not Minnesota cold, but it is really damn cold for SoCal. I’ve never experienced anything like it since living here, and it sucks. We are just not built for it here. I do not own any really warm clothing. I don’t have a coat. Californians don’t empty our pools, for the winter or leave our spa pumps running 24/7. They don’t leave a trickle of water running in homes that they leave for a weekend. They don’t disconnect the sprinkler system and put socks on their outdoor faucets. Hell they don’t even turn off the sprinkler timers for the winter.

    We’ve had ice on our sidewalks for 4 days now, and it isn’t even melting by midday. There have been multiple freeway accidents due to black ice. Where is it we are living? We know a lot of people who have busted pipes thanks to the last few days of weather. We tried to go out for dinner this weekend and the place we wanted to go was closed because their pipes had frozen and burst. Our bird is in the garage, and is not at all happy about it. Normally he lives outside all year. I’m sure we’ll find breaks in our landscaping pipes as well.

    Overall the big problem is the severe crop damage. Citrus and avocado have taken very bad hits. Berries and leafy greens are not fairing much better (and of course California’s leafy greens already took a consumer confidence and sales hit earlier this year due to the ecoli outbreak). Obviously this is going to hurt California’s economy over the coming year, but California provides so much produce to the nation, this is not just a local issue. It is going to have an effect on produce prices nationwide, and that is bad news for everyone.

    In my own tiny little sliver of personal produce production, I am pretty sure that my lime tree and habernero plant are both totally screwed.