Day 4: 'Slippin

Ok so if you've been to our house or have been following this chronicle of my misadventures in maintaining a lawn in Seattle, then you know that we have been fighting losing battles with our lawn since we got the house.
But after dealing with the garden and replanting trees I just lost it.
I had had enough of this mother nature nonsense.

She was going down.

Permanently.

But first I had to figure out how...
 
Now there are several reasons that man has ultimately conquered this planet.  We have gained dominance through new innovations that have allowed us to tame the beast that is mother nature.  I mean seriously way back in the day nature was some serious trouble.. just about everything bigger than a dog had horns on it and could ream straight through you on a whim.  Luckily as a race we were able to overcome this and prosper.  Listed below are what I believe to be the top 5

Number 5 : Genetic Engineering
Today we have almost anything thanks to science here we have essentially taken nature and made her our slave, we can create whatever we want (unless the FDA says no) and sell it as produce.  This can take the form of anything from blue strawberries to square fruits that should be round... like watermelon? What the....?

Number 4: Water, Land, and Soil Pollution
If you take a little trip down the Mississippi you will eventually come to Louisiana where it is all parties and Mardi Gras beads because that is what the river brings down for them and eventually the gulf of Mexico.  This is completely true, 100% if by parties you understood mass death and you took Mardi Gras beads to be plastic bits and other pollutants that kill things (they call this area "The Dead Zone").  The problem has gotten so bad that we have had actual fires on the rivers from burning debris.

Number 3: Cars (and the Combustion Engine)
As long as we're talking about the Mississippi and the dead zone.. BP OIL SPILL.  Alright so without combustion this never would have happened! Without combustion there would be far fewer carbon emissions and we wouldn't have been able to travel as far which would allow mother nature to recuperate when we go to areas and completely demolish forests and habitats in a matter of days thanks to ...

Number 2: Fire
When some dumb (that is the current assessment of their intelligence according to wikipedia) cavemen discovered fire they really had the right idea.  With fire they were finally able to scare off some larger mammals and most importantly they allowed us to do stuff like this...

... 'Nuff said.

And finally
Number 1: The Slip N Slide

So the power of the slip n slide is that not only do you waste exorbitant amounts of water, if you leave the dang thing out for long enough you'll kill whatever is under it.  It's simple, it's effective and most importantly it's fun!


So I went to Lowe's and picked me up some black polyethylene cover and we laid it out down our hill... 100 feet, 10 feet wide... it took 7 rolls to cover 80% of the lot... but when it started raining later in the day... we knew what had to be done...

Fourt of July (From the day after)

"The tried and true holiday of the United States of America."  No joke, that's what the headline was for the magazine from Delta... What the heck does that even mean? I have no clue, what I do know however is that no fourth can be complete without explosives and poor choices. From our house here in Seattle we were able to view 3 separate municipal fireworks displays and an unlimited number personal displays (including our own).  Our elderly neighbors actually came out and watched our show, in fact I'm pretty sure they stayed up/out on that porch later than we did.  Earlier in the day we managed to stop by Gas Works... and wow... just wow... I've always wanted to be a part of something like that (for those of you not from Washington here's what happened: WaMu was the main sponsor of the Sound's firework display every year and when they went belly up there were no funds for a show.  As soon as it was announced community members were up in arms, by the end of the week the combined donations of numerous corporations including Starbucks and Microsoft and hundreds of individuals totaled over $500k) sadly since I don't actually live here in Washington 90% of the year... Fortunately I was here for this grand and hopefully new Seattle Fourth of July tradition.


Unfortunately since we were preoccupied in combating the forces of nature at the house, we had to send our "better half" to do the acquisitions of supplies. What my mother ended up bringing home at first sounded promising... but after five minutes of trying to light the wick, I realized that the Fred Meyer brand of fireworks she had purchased were nothing more than generic party poppers... I also learned that party popper pull strings are flame retardant...  Things were looking glum as minion numero uno totally screwed up our [first batch of] strawberry rhubarb pies putting 3/4 a teaspoon of corn starch instead of 3 tablespoons of it which ultimately made for some very soup-y pies.  This fourth of July had suddenly take a turn for the worst when all of a sudden...
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 MUCKLESHOOT TO THE  RESCUE!!!


Who would have ever guessed that after less than a century a people, that we collectively as Americans attempted to expunge from our oh so conveniently "manifested" lands, would come to represent the savior of this nation's birthday? Although July 4th actually isn't when the United States was formed... nor was it when the Declaration of Independence was signed (August 2nd...)... or anything, it's almost as if this holiday was adopted simply because we like to blow stuff up.  ANYWAYs... thanks to the power of the automobile combined with Muckleshoot we were able to save our fourth of July and spend less than $200 at the same time YAY!!

However it seems that we are not the only people who enjoy watching the earth's ozone die just a bit faster.  In Spain Las Fallas are really sick, I had the pleasure of witnessing it first hand  awhile back.  Basically they make huge flammable monuments and then on March 19th they light them up and watch 'em burn.  Good stuff really, but that's not what we're talking about  here.  Today after making a makeshift fire pit after two of those recessed metal window well thingamabobs and some trees we cut down earlier in the day(see next post of Day 3: Return of the weed Whackers) we were making our smores like any good Americans.  As it got later and later the fire started to dwindle and people started to leave... and my mother says "we should burn all the dead weeds and grass and make some more smores!    [
Hold up rewind...
Grass + Leaves + Fire = eye searing smoke... no fire or anything (you're actually supposed to burn leaves when lost in islands/jungles to produce smoke signals because leaves/grass SMOKE so much)
Roasting marshmallows in eye searing smoke + eating them = more carcinogens than even I would care to ingest...
Ok play...
]  after all it's good for the environment."
There you have it folks the reason napalm was such a hit in Vietnam was because it was actually GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.  Sometimes I wonder how my parents maintain their respective professions...

Hope everyone had a good fourth.
Happy Belated Fourth Of July.

Day 3: The Danger of Shuffle

So today was a pretty much a mop up operation of the front/visible lawn etc... Our battle had been more or less successful in the garden and we were just tidying up what was left that the neighbors could see.  It would have been the easiest day by far except... oh that's right we have a bunch of freaking trees in our yard... I know, I know, "stop whining trees are easy to prune, that should be quick and painless."  But wait there's more (there always is in my family/life)!!!
We... excuse me I (ok my brothers helped with the first one) had to remove 8 trees.  And we're not talking baby saplings or anything these are full blown Thuja occidentalis! Ok first of all, I don't understand why the tree would ever be named something like Thuja occidentalis basically just means Western Tree... if it is just a western tree then why do we even need it's own special name?  If for some reason we do need a specific name then why not just call it The Western Tree?
Ok so to remove a tree there are basically two ways you can start going about it you could either
a) Make it a Stump - This is when you basically just  cut off the aboveground parts of the tree. If you really wanna do a good job you'll use a special dealio to seal the tree up so it literally can't grow anymore.

b) Remove the entire tree stump and all -this is basically when you spend numerous hours of intense labor trying to get the whole damn root out.  Seems simple enough right?

 Guess which method I had to do...

So I literally climbed a bunch of trees and pulled them down to the ground and yanked on the trunk until it was loose enough to pitchfork out.
Yeah it was rough... and then afterward I had to dig new holes for the new trees... I felt like I was at Camp Green Lake (and the first person that can tell me what book that's from will get a free "Chat 'O Sass").

The best part of the day though was when I had music coming out my butt (via my amazing phone) and was singing loudly for the world to see.  I really need to actually meet my neighbors sometime there are 4 kids my age (I think) 2 of them are total skateboard punks and the other two are like orthodox Jews but I've never actually talked to them or introduced myself I'm always busy slaving and sweating away. I dunno it would just feel awkward to meet them then. Does anyone have any ideas on the best way/place to meet people?  Leave it in the comments or something or email me and we'll make a post bout that later.
Ok finally to the point of our title.  While I had this music coming out my buttocks it was on random because lets face it, listening to the same songs over and over again is boring now matter how good they are.  Right as the two punk 'boarders come down the street to their house my butt puts out "Won't Say I'm In Love"  by the pussy cat dolls.  Both girls just started snickering and kept going... Really..? How am I that unlucky... First of all while the original Disney version is pretty awesome, listening to a bunch of pop divas sing it is just... typical.  That is why you must always beware of shuffle mode on music players... that or get rid of the little children that mess with your phone and/or music... *sigh. If anyone has ideas... or wants to buy them? People tell me they're cute...

Day 2: The Forest Infestation

After a rough first day reclaiming our house from mother nature, we realized we needed a break from the insidious lawn so we turned to what was once our humble garden.  What it now was however was something completely and utterly alien.  Imagine:

 except for 5 feet tall.  Luckily, these were weeds and we didn't mind mass murdering weeds as we did grass (we consider ourselves "reforming" grass) except oh wait, this was our GARDEN.  You know that place where people generally put plants they do NOT want to kill...

So we ended up spending the whole day kneeling/bent over pulling tall weeds from between the apple trees while others of us tediously dug up weeds from under the grape vines and blueberry stalks etc... I don't know how many of you garden or have pulled a weed lately but I discovered that one of the most satisfying feelings (oh boy... that should probably be a list sometime... more stuff to do Yay!!) is right when the weed comes out of the ground and you can feel the root coming out with it.  Some weeds are tougher than others though in fact, we found some regular old dandelions that had roots thicker than an inch in diameter.

Once again  by the end of the day we were all exhausted, but the garden was more or less weed free, only our grapes, tomatoes, onions, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, roses and fruit bearing trees remained.  And at the conclusion of this clash between man and nature, we had come away with a clear cut (haha so Punny...) victory nothing destroyed by the garden or laid to waste by the weeds.  Even so, our combined exhaustion and waste of 10+ hours were both casualties in this battle...


The Running Score:


Graminoid Interfector + Garden: 20
10 Hours on Garden
1 Lawn Mower
2 Weed whackerss
7 Rakes


The Family: 17
5 (Half of the Lawn)
12 (Completed Garden)

Day 2 goes to me and the family.


That being said we also got a new computer for my grandmother yesterday and I looked into getting myself a laptop for college.  For some reason I had set my mind to get myself a macbook pro (I know I know, I'm ashamed too) but when I got to bestbuy I compared the specs and price tags and I honestly have no idea why I wanted a mac. Does anyone have any real reasons for getting a mac (besides the fact that it is pretty and shiny)?