Gate is Done and Hung, Going after the Puncture Vine

Finally, the gate is done and hung.  Now I am working on pulling up some of the puncture vine and hope  to start priming and painting the lower half of the house next weekend, if temperatures.  Never ending work, but I love it.  It bothers me that so many things need doing and I don’t like relaxing knowing I’m not doing those.  I think after 20 years on this project, I need to learn to kickback and enjoy because it is never going to be finished to my satisfaction.

Looking East to West. Fence and gate are done.

Looking West to East

A better picture of the gate

Looking through the fence to the back pastures

Now for a little more details on the puncture vines.  They are all over the place.  The seed spreads by puncturing the tires of the mower until they see a little spot then they pop off and imbed themselves in the ground.  5 years ago we didn’t see any but we can’t hardly get ahead of it now.

Another thing I did this weekend was to groom Kinzie.  She really doesn’t like it, so I have give her lots of hugs and kisses.  I put her up on an old coffee table then I don’t have to sit on the floor of bend over so much as I am not that agile or limber any more and these old bones hurt.  When I was finished with as much as she would let me and I told her to get down.  Instead she curled up and took a nap.  I sure do love my fur-baby.

Kinzie on the old coffee table which has been turned into a grooming table.

While working on this post I heard my grandson Leon out front of the house trying to pull an old lawn mower out of the weeds, as he is going to work on that as a project this summer.  Uncle Troy is going to mentor him in doing it.  This is going to be interesting.  I guess he has a mechanical interest.  That can’t be a bad thing.

In pulling out the mower, he came upon a bee’s hive.  A pretty BIG bee’s hive.  You should have seen that city boy run, but I think his dad ran faster.  Hehe.  Here’s a few pictures for you viewing pleasure.

Watch those boys run

Leon’s project

Checking out the hive.

A double shot of bee spray

Running for the hills

Now that made my afternoon.

Back to the weeds.  Here is my solution to the goats head aka puncture vine, gather together the vine as much as possible without dropping the pointy seeds, dig down to get the root and pull up and put in a container for disposal.  Then you can lay a piece of styrofoam on the ground and walk on it and it will come up with a lot of the loose seeds stuck on it.  Now you just scrape those little devils into the container.  You can never get them all, but you can get a lot of them.  The styrofoam idea came from a co-work.  It works Walt.  Wahoo.  🙂

One cluster of puncture vine. You can identify it by it’s lacy leaves and yellow flowers, and it thorny seeds.

an even bigger patch along the driveway.

The weed digger and disposal kit.

Well, I guess that about sums up my weekend.  Back to the salt mines tomorrow.  Weekends go by too fast, but I don’t know that I could physically deal with a longer weekend.

Annie, The weed pullin’, gate hangin’ country girl.