Our New Gardening Tool

Throughout most of the summer, the lack of rain meant that there were hardly any weeds to pull — a much-appreciated silver lining to the drought. 

Even so, crabgrass managed to take hold on the patio quickly with just a little rain in September to get it started. Since summer was mostly over and we weren’t spending much time eating outdoors anymore, we mostly ignored it. 

Not surprisingly, it got out of hand.

The state of the patio was far too embarrassing for photos, but here’s a sense:
 

Imagine this time about 50, and you’ve got an idea of how awful it looked.

It’s all gone to seed now, which means that when we finally got out butts in gear to pull it out, this happened:


Thousands of seeds falling between the cracks in the bricks is bad news for next year. So Kirk decided on an unconventional weed-killing method:


That’s our Shop-Vac, commissioned to suck up all the seeds before they could work their way into the cracks or around the rest of the yard or garden on the wind. Hopefully this works, or else our patio will look like a post-apocalyptic wonderland next summer. 

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