The prettiest pine needles I've ever seen

January 25th, 2014

I went to Greenwood Dog Park with Petey, my pit bull, and my blower with a new battery and a renewed old one.  

I had finally broken down and gone looking for a new blower or at least a battery at Home Depot.  A nice lady took us right to the blowers.  They were out of stock of my Black and Decker blower, which turned out well, because when I asked about batteries, I was taken to the battery row by the nice lady, who had previously gone to see if any blowers were in stock.  Finding the battery, I thought it would be nice to have a smart charger, and was pointed to one that was also fast, and would charge my batteries in an hour rather than a day.

So, when I got to the dog park, I was loaded with enough power to really blow the pavements around it. Ironically, I had visited mid-week to get some photos for my chickweed article, so the path was not as messy as usual.  But I blew off the bark from the front pavements, the sidewalk around the circle in front of the park, and the path down to the overlook.

The tunic gives me a new attitude toward doing more work for the public, and using all the tools at my disposal.  I'd complained about the compost that had been sloppily spread onto the edge of the path several months before, several times, but it hadn't been cleaned off.  My little battery blower, I said, didn't have the power to do the job.  The previous Saturday, I got my flat shovel out of the truck and scooped off the pavement.  This Saturday, I took my newly powered blower and blew off most of the remnant; rain will have to do the rest.

Likewise, when I was again stuck by thorns from low twigs on the locust trees, I grabbed my loppers (Fiskars 18" gear-action loppers are great for small women like me; a new one slices through anything it can get around) and limbed up the trees that the picnic table is under so I could safely walk around them.  I found one tiny piece of litter in the park, a scrap of tennis ball cover, so I picked up ankle-breaker rocks and put them in some holes the dogs have dug.  I'll probably  never get them all; they are constantly being eroded out of that very rocky soil.  

It is difficult indeed to put soil back into holes dogs have dug; they pack it down in in the process of digging.  Over at Schroeder, I use the loose gravel that they spread just inside the entrance to fill the holes; there is no such handy supply at Greenwood.  Some Saturday, I might make a try at scraping up the dirt and covering the rocks in the holes.

I greeted a few people walking by with their dogs or otherwise, and handed them the latest leaflets: the one above on chickweed, with an SOS ad on the back for their "Run for the Law" this March, and the Support Litter Cleanup in Grants Pass leaflet that explains what I'm doing, with landscape nuisance codes on the back.  Harry Mackin, walking his big, beautiful shepherd with his wife, asked me if I was going to run for Commissioner.  I said, "I don't want to boss anyone anymore!  I just want to make this (pointing to my tunic) work.  If this works, I don't want to do anything else for the next ten years."

 Pine trees on the north side of Brownell, with pretty needle mulch, before the wind blew hard.

As I left to head home, driving down Brownell, I saw pine needles on the sidewalk that I had been thinking about cleaning up and using elsewhere for months.  The big wind a few nights ago had gathered them in to piles.  It was now or never.  I put my tunic back on and raked them up, collecting a 30-gallon trash bag and a half of the finest, lightest, prettiest pine needles I had ever had the pleasure to rake.  I had enough power left in my blower to blow off the debris where I raked.  I later had the distinct pleasure of scattering those pretty needles into my parents' brick planter, providing proper and very pretty mulch for the spread of cyclamen and hellebores, neither of which sprout well with heavy leaf cover.

A better view of pretty pine needle mulch, naturally spread.