Parkway Update (It's working!)

Thank God for little sisters, even if they are over 40.  

The parkway is flourishing very nicely.  I am watering it through the sprinkler system twice a week.   The California Poppies came up first.  Actually I believe the poppies may be responsible for smothering some of the other seedlings.  In addition to the orange of the poppies and the pink of the Clarkia, the blues and purples are expected soon.  We shall see.

  

I am considering eradicating what's left of the grass  patch in my back garden, without the use of chemicals or extensive labor, as I listen to Jon Bansen, a third generation dairyman, talk about how he raises his Jersey cows without antibiotics or chemicals.

Jon Bansen says that 60 years ago there was no need to push organic farming because that's all there was.  I'm at the Seattle Green Festival and Bansen is the speaker at a seminar called "Organic Farming."  The seminar  isn't specifically about organic farming.  Specifically it's about raising Jersey milking cows organically.  Which is ok with me, I just wish they had billed it that way.  Bansen as it turns out, in addition to being a contributing writer for Graze Magazine, is also the West Coast regional leader of Organic Valley Farmer Ambassador Program and one of the Cooperative's Dairy executive committee representative for the state of Oregon.  So as it turns out Bansen's cooperative is one of the country's largest organic food makers, Organic Valleys.  Again all this is fine with me, his talk was informative and convincingly from the heart.  I just wish they had called it something other than Organic Farming.  All of these Green Festival festivities and these organic seminars are making me think more about my real problem of getting rid of the grass.  

The grass has to go because like my parkway, under the guise of environmentalism, I want a maintenance free garden.  getting rid of the grass, going with a three inch covering of small pebbles, and letting the sprinklers only hit the perimeter vegetation.  Guise or not this is a water saving sustainable re design.  Anytime I want to plant something I can scrape away the pebbles, dig it in and put a dripper right to it.  Simon and Bailey can relieve themselves in an emergency and a scooper or a hose off drains in into the earth.  Jeff Werner warns that my grandchildren might prefer to play in the grass.  If that becomes the case I will scrape up the rocks, apply top oil and sod it out again.  

After two weeks of no water on the grass, it continues to flourish.  The treatments are either too toxic or too costly.  I feel the best solution is to hire of band of workers to dig it out.