YOU'D THINK I'D LEARN

I've been in Tucson for nearly 20 years.

I've lived in a house with a yard for most of those years.

I've been an avid gardener the whole time.

Over the weekend, we finally got after the weed/bermuda grass jungle which appeared in our front yard after all our winter rains.

The front yard is mostly gravel. In Tucson, the cost of keeping both our front yard and back yard in grass would be prohibitive anway, but our little house has a sort of circle drive in front. The gravel mulch does help to keep unwanted flora at bay but there are definitely some problem areas.

It's not really the weeds that are the big problem. It is the dadgum Bermuda grass! The stuff is rampantly invasive! Any area which gets a bit of moisture will quickly produce a tangle of Bermuda grass which can only be controlled by regular applications of toxic chemicals. That, too, can get prohibitively expensive.

So, in the Spring, we cut down and pull out as much of it as we can and then start with the spraying.

One area in the front is 'decorated' thusly.

I wanted one Santa Rita Prickly Pear cactus because the blooms are awesome, but mostly because I love their winter color.  These are in the couryard at De Grazia's Gallery.

Many years ago, I pulled a couple of pads from a plant in someone's front yard and plopped them into a pot of gravelly dirt and basically, forgot about them. This is what they have become. You can barely see the pot they are in.

This is what it looked like last year.

Anywho.....there were some stray Bermuda grass runners all around the pot and that wouldn't do. So I...with my bare hand....stupidly began pulling out the grass. I do this same stupid thing every Spring. And every Spring, I am painfully reminded that hiding in the gravel are the remains of last years Prickly Pear fruit. All withered and shriveled. And completely covered with microscopic 'thorns' called 'glochids.

Glochids are tiny, finely barbed hair-like spines. And they hurt.

I spent most of the evening hours trying to get all those little devils out of my fingertips.

OUCH!

I'm grateful they are gone now.
Mostly.