Texas gardening

The temperature dipped below 26 celcius and the sky clouded over, which meant it was time to deal with the back garden. The builders had half-heartedly seeded the back of the house with non-native grass, which had gone crazy as soon as spring arrived. We had allowed it to become seriously overgrown, and now I was going to pay the price.

I started off by giving it a once-over with the string trimmer, getting rid of the worst of the large bushy weeds and thinning out the grass a bit. Clouds of insects were disturbed by this, so I set up the bug zapper to lure them away. Then I put the lawnmower together.

Things I found in the grass:

• Bits of live oak branches.
• Broken glass.
• A 4cm spider, tan colored with yellow-brown stripes, so probably a fully-grown wolf spider.
• A dead pigeon, dessicated by the heat, only recognizable because of a handful of intact feathers.
• Some kind of beetle, about penny sized.

Things I was relieved not to find (this time):

• Scorpions—apparently scorpion season is later in the year.
• 6″ centipedes.
• Cockroaches.

We now have… well, I wouldn’t call it a lawn, but it’s a patch of grass you can’t lose medium-size objects in. I think we want to put down a proper lawn of buffalo grass anyway, I just wanted to get it to a state where it wasn’t completely shame-inducing.

I’ve also put up a squirrel feeder. The squirrels have found it, but I haven’t seen them lift up the lid and take food out yet. I could tell they were excited by it by the way their tails were twitching, though.