I don’t have a green thumb. I have no interest in gardening and also no skills. So it might surprise you to walk into my yard and see a veritable jungle in the desert. Yes, plants besides cacti can grow in the desert. They are called weeds.
Pulling weeds feels like such a waste of time to me. It’s not a task that requires any specialized skill; it’s just a menial task that robs me of time better spent on other activities. And the end result is just no weeds. Yes, the yard looks better but so what? Normally I would hire someone for such a task. This morning I chose to tackle the weeds myself.
Why the change? Here is my thought process, which has nothing to do with money.
- I need to get some sunlight exposure in the morning to reset my circadian rhythm.
- I need to get some physical activity.
- If the weeds aren’t pulled soon, I may need to purchase a machete to cut a path to my recycle and garbage bins.
- I can listen to a podcast while I’m doing it.
I have found the way to motivate myself to do tasks I really don’t want to do is to combine the tasks with other activities or benefits so that I get a multiplicative effect rather than just completing the one task.
So I grabbed some gloves, popped in my AirPods, and tackled the yard. For those interested, I chose Episode #672 of Bulletproof Radio in which Dave Asprey interviews Dr. Mark Hyman about his new book Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet–One Bite at a Time. I started this book, and it is truly eye-opening the mess the human race has gotten itself into to grow food to sustain the earth’s population.
There is a bit of technique with pulling weeds. With gloves, I don’t have the fine motor control and have to make adjustments. You can’t just pull weeds willy nilly. I suppose you can, but this leads to breaking off the stalks instead of pulling the full roots. If you don’t get the roots, the weeds are just going to keep growing. I also discovered that if you let the weeds grow too big, they become much more difficult to yank out roots and all.
For the smaller weeds, I decided I need some type of weed killer. I don’t like using pesticides or chemicals. A quick Google search revealed a home-made concoction of white vinegar, salt, and dish soap to be an effective weed killer. I have no earthly idea how this combination works, but I tried it and time will tell. By the way, it’s referred to as “treating” weeds, which is a rather humorous interpretation of that word.
The task is done. Do I feel a sense of accomplishment? I guess. I mean, I still would rather have spent my time on other things. At least I got some sunlight and extra activity in addition to looking at the yard afterward and saying, “Huh, looks better!”
5-17-20
It’s been about 2.5 months since I dealt with my little weed problem. Little weed problems turn into big weed problems I have discovered. So much for the weedkiller. All the weeds I pulled have come back with a vengeance.
My girlfriend tells me there is a cycle to these things. You are supposed to do some type of pre-treatment at a certain time of year and all that. I didn’t get the memo. So now I have to face the weeds again. Did I mention that some of them have grown taller than I am?
So much for pulling weeds! Why go through all the effort of pulling them if they are just going to come right back. Time to step up my game. Instead of a machete, I opted for a good old-fashioned weed wacker. I managed to find a deal on a Black and Decker cordless model, and I took it out for a spin this morning.
When I was a kid, I remember the weed wackers were a pain to use because you had to periodically hit them on the ground to advance more cord and inevitably the cord ended up tangled. This model has some auto-advance feature that eliminates the need to hit it on the ground but does not eliminate the tangling. Twice, I had to stop using it and figure out why there was no cord coming out of the spool. I’m sure this had nothing to do with the fact that I was trying to cut down some weeds with stalks as thick as a Sharpie marker.
I do like the cordless option, but the battery did not last long. It could be that it was not fully charged to start with. I call this “saved by the battery.” Well, looks like I can’t do any more until the battery is charged!