Live from Austin!

I’ve been laughing at some online galleries of photos by home inspectors. (Volume 1, Volume 2.)

The wrench foundation is basically what was under our house, but with wooden shims instead of a wrench, and concrete instead of metal for the pillar.

The one that made me laugh hardest was the air circulation masterpiece.

Anyhow…there’s a saying that hard work pays off tomorrow, but laziness pays off immediately. Well, sometimes laziness pays off tomorrow as well, especially when it comes to gardening.

Last summer I noticed that the grass out back wasn’t doing too well. I have to assume it was planted by whoever built the house, and that they just picked the cheapest grass seed. In winter and spring it would grow like crazy, and then in summer it mostly turned brown and died. It clearly wasn’t suited to a Texas climate.

Then this summer, I noticed that some kind of plant was gradually taking over. It was a bit like clover, but bigger. It started as a couple of patches, but by mid summer it had pretty much replaced all the grass on the right side of the path, and had somehow made the leap to a patch on the left side. I pondered whether this was the kind of thing that ought to be treated with weedkiller.

In the end, though, I wasn’t too concerned about doing anything, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was too damn hot to do anything; and secondly, we wanted to get rid of the unsuitable grass anyway and replace it with something more suited to local conditions. The plan was to get some buffalo grass sod put down, or perhaps a hybrid like Turffalo planted via plugs.

Then last week we paid an arborist to inspect our trees and offer advice on how to best take care of them. I asked him about the stuff that had eaten the lawn, and he told me it was Horse Herb. It’s a native ground covering of the Texas hill country. It thrives in the shady areas under live oak trees, forming a thick, lush, lawn-like surface that you can mow just like a regular lawn.

So by being lazy, we got a free native plant lawn replacement. It doesn’t need watering in summer, and you only have to mow it every 2-4 months. It produces tiny yellow flowers at the end of summer, and is apparently robust enough to crowd out weeds. Sure, you can’t play golf on it, but you can walk on it, sit on it, and watch squirrels dig in it.

So instead of expensive lawncare, our best bet is to roto-till the bald patches in the back yard with some organic fertilizer, get some Horse Herb seed from the Lady Bird Johnson wildflower center, and sow. Then simply leave it alone. Awesome.

The other secret to Texas lawn care I have discovered is mulching. Get a mower which mulches. Sure, it’s good for the lawn, but what’s even better is you don’t have to rake, bag up clippings, or drag sacks of yard waste around.

We just filled 7× 110 liter paper sacks with fallen leaves from the back yard. We still have plenty of leaves, but we ran out of sacks.

On Saturday it rained. I’m not sure if it was that or SXSW, but for whatever reason the squirrels all came out to play. We had all 5 of the regulars feeding at once. Chasing and comical feeding antics ensued.

The high point was when one squirrel was sitting on the squirrel-a-whirl, looking over the hub and down at the corn below. Another squirrel rushed up from behind and gave him a shove, and suddenly he was a flying squirrel.

Blacktip seems to have ceded his position of Alpha Squirrel to Tiny, our squirrel ninja whose leaps of over a meter put the others to shame. Tiny is feared by all the other squirrels—except Frida, who is apparently too psycho to give in.

The squirrels also fought off a blue jay and some grackles. It was like an urban wildlife documentary out there.

No squirrelfest photos, I’m afraid. I need a telephoto lens, but that’ll have to wait until I can sell the film SLR.

So, back yards with trees have pluses as well as minuses.

[P.S.: Cool squirrel T-shirt reprinted at Threadless, and on sale.]

The temperature dipped below 26 celcius and the sky clouded over, which meant it was time to deal with the back garden. The builders had half-heartedly seeded the back of the house with non-native grass, which had gone crazy as soon as spring arrived. We had allowed it to become seriously overgrown, and now I was going to pay the price.

I started off by giving it a once-over with the string trimmer, getting rid of the worst of the large bushy weeds and thinning out the grass a bit. Clouds of insects were disturbed by this, so I set up the bug zapper to lure them away. Then I put the lawnmower together.

Things I found in the grass:

• Bits of live oak branches.
• Broken glass.
• A 4cm spider, tan colored with yellow-brown stripes, so probably a fully-grown wolf spider.
• A dead pigeon, dessicated by the heat, only recognizable because of a handful of intact feathers.
• Some kind of beetle, about penny sized.

Things I was relieved not to find (this time):

• Scorpions—apparently scorpion season is later in the year.
• 6″ centipedes.
• Cockroaches.

We now have… well, I wouldn’t call it a lawn, but it’s a patch of grass you can’t lose medium-size objects in. I think we want to put down a proper lawn of buffalo grass anyway, I just wanted to get it to a state where it wasn’t completely shame-inducing.

I’ve also put up a squirrel feeder. The squirrels have found it, but I haven’t seen them lift up the lid and take food out yet. I could tell they were excited by it by the way their tails were twitching, though.