Time to 'Fess Up - the Yard is a Mess

I have been told that I need to get back to work updating this blog. I believe that I have been told this for two reasons: first of all, the nudger wants the family to, indeed, get the hell out of Dodge; second, I think the nudger is interested in seeing more pictures of kittens. I could be wrong about either or both reasons, but I'll stand by my story.

There are numerous excuses reasons, of course, why I haven't posted anything in two months. But I won't bore myself by writing them out. Suffice it to say that it's just been life as usual.

Since I actually have some pictures of what is going on in the yard (or, at least what was going on a few weeks ago when the camera was still working), tonight I'm going to talk about the yard. In short, the yard is a mess. We worked very hard in the early summer to pull weeds and eradicate puncture vine, but some untimely rain did us in. Everything is overgrown and ugly.

Plus all of our vegetables died. It has not been a good summer for the yard and garden.

I have no idea what these thready things all over the place are, but they appeared one day. Just one of the benefits of living in a desert where plants develop survival skills that let them remain dormant for years until the conditions are just right -- like three days of rain.

The puncture vine continues to be our biggest problem, however. Here's a nice healthy one that we pulled up one day:

See those spiky things? Those are immature goat heads. A closer view of one goat-head "fruit":

And guess what this "fruit" turns into? A whole bunch of goat-heads!

If you've ever studied the history of war, or read a good historical novel, you might have run across mentions of caltrops. Goat heads are nature's caltrops. No matter how they lay on the ground, there's always a sharp pricker sticking up waiting to ram itself into your foot.

Or your Crocs:

Somewhere along the line this fall, it occurred to me that one way to collect goat heads was to tromp around the yard wearing Crocs. Then I just pulled them out of the soles of the Crocs and deposited them in that jar that can be seen to the right of the picture above. The jar isn't full yet, but there's still time.

And just to satisfy those who only want to see pictures of kittens, here is a picture of our baby cats when they were all still living with us. (Two have found their forever home in someone else's house.)

The third, of course, is now a permanent member of the household.

Such a sweet face! That's our baby, variously known as Tuna, Piglet, TunaPiglet, TunaPig, or -- her official name (it's right there on the vet's records) -- Harley.