{"id":2011,"date":"2022-04-15T23:55:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-16T03:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2022-04-15T23:55:49","modified_gmt":"2022-04-16T03:55:49","slug":"mole-meadows-with-stick-orgies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/?p=2011","title":{"rendered":"Mole Meadows With Stick Orgies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Spring is trying to edge its way into Beautiful West Michigan. And of course, as the weather warms up, we’ll have to start mowing the lawn. There’s that contentious word… lawn. <\/strong><\/em>Well it’s contentious at our house anyway. It’s what I call the parts of the yard I mow every week or so. Curiosity drove me to look up the definition, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary online says, \u201cground (as around a house or in a garden or park) that is covered with grass and is kept mowed.\u201d Doesn’t say anything about clover, dandelions, or the other myriad of plants that grow along with the grass in our \u201clawn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don’t have a lawn, we have a yard!!\u201d <\/strong><\/em>So goes the lament of my Beautiful Girlfriend, who let me marry her many moons ago. \u201cBut I’m OK with a yard,\u201d she adds pensively. It’s probably more of a meadow, and she knows very well that because we are both tree huggers, no chemicals will ever be spread on our lawn. That of course means that lots more than grass will grow. She’s very tolerant of it really; although if I could wave a magic wand and change the whole yard into a golf course quality lawn I’m sure she’d be tickled pink. My neighbors might like it if we had fewer dandelions. They’ve never complained, but I often wonder about whether they dread a bunch of little parachutes are lofted into their yards during a stiff westerly breeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also get quite a few mounds that the moles like to give us as presents. The mole hills cause my Lovely Bride to engage in some really naughty proclamations. She’d love it if they would just stop; but she’d never go as far as our neighbor across the road who sets traps to kill the poor babies. She does, however, revel in the rare occasion when our cat is able to find one and yank it to the surface. She kind of makes a grunt of annoyed compliance when I mention that these makers of mole meadows eat lots of grubs that would otherwise turn into Japanese beetles. And yes they also eat earthworms, but we don’t seem to have a shortage of those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spring also zooms in with some rather blustery days, and since we have several trees in the yard, they have a tendency to drop some sticks. OK, many sticks. Many many<\/strong><\/em> sticks. Yesterday I came in from outside and tried to be as stoic as possible when I delivered some news to my Honey Pie. \u201c Honey, I have bad news. We have a couple sticks in the yard.\u201d She bribbled and frooped a bit and then said, \u201cThose sticks… they keep having babies!! They’re having stick orgies out there!!\u201d \u201cI’m way too young to think about such things,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from stick orgies and mole meadows, believe it or not the \u201clawn\u201d we grow actually has some benefits. Dandelions have edible leaves and of course the blossoms feed the bees. White clover blossoms also feed the bees of course, and since clover is a legume it makes nitrogen that naturally feeds neighboring plants (yes, even grass!!). Plaintains<\/a> (\u2190 click for more info) grow here and there, and are both edible and medicinally very valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yeah, we have mole meadows with free stick orgies. I haven’t watched these sticks carefully to see what kind of mischief they might be creating; as I mentioned earlier I’m much too young for such carnal kaboom. There just might be something to what my wife professes to be true, though. Those doggoned sticks just keep making babies!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd now,\u201d as John Cleese used to say, \u201cfor something completely different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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