Spring Things

Today I was driving around my neighborhood and as I was driving I saw that quite a few people have dandelions already growing in their grass. Fortunately, I don't have any...yet. But each year my dandelion garden is getting smaller and smaller (YEAH!!!). A couple years ago my hubby and I went to an organic gardening class and the man teaching the class said that corn gluten is a natural way to get rid of dandelions. He also said to allow your grass to grow a little longer because it forces the leaves of the weed up and they need to be opened up to get the sunshine they need to thrive. Also allowing your grass to be a little taller gives you a beautiful lush green lawn even when we aren't getting a lot of rain. I never water my lawn, yet our grass is almost always greener than the people who do. Our neighbor gets his lawn treated and our grass looks better than his.  I always cringe when I drive pass a house and they've given a buzz cut to their grass and by the end of summer they have a brown yard. Isn't it funny how when you get older the things that you brag about? I would have never guessed I'd be proud of my green grass :). I also have noticed that my hubby and I have gotten into some strange conversations too...for example, we were saying wouldn't it be cool if you could somehow go back in time and make everyone believe that dandelions are the prettiest "flower" to have? Then when we come back to our time, we would have the best yard ever. LOL! Weird, I know. But seriously, have you ever seen a field of dandelions? I think it's beautiful, I really do. There is a field not far from us and every year it's full of dandelions and it's so pretty. It's picture perfect in a way...a sea of yellow and green with a big blue sky and white fluffly clouds for it's backdrop. But it doesn't look that way in my yard. In my yard it looks like weird spaghetti with yellow puffs on the end. Wow, I kind of went of topic there, anyway, back to corn gluten, somehow it stops the dandelions from reseeding. So if you put it down you can't put down grass seed for a while because it will kill it. Well finally after putting down corn gluten for about 4 years in a row, we have almost no dandelions.

I'm probably slightly neurotic with not using chemicals in my lawn, but I can't help it. My little one plays in the grass, as well as my dog (who also tends to eat it from time to time) and it makes me nervous to put stuff down that could cause harm. My neighbors were laughing at me one day because we had some serious ant issues in the front yard. Again the organic man gave us some tips for that too. He said that ants don't like cinnamon, so just sprinkle some cinnamon on their home and after a while they'll leave. So I went to Sam's Club and bought giant industrial sized cinnamon, came home and started sprinkling it all over my front yard. When my neighbors smelled the delicious smell of cinnamon, they came over. I told them my plan and they all just laughed at me. But you know what? The ants left! It took a little while, but they did leave. Unfortunately, they moved to my backyard. Sigh. Slowly, but surely, I'm getting rid of them. I have a green area behind my house and I'm trying to move them back there and then I'll just have to put cinnamon around my perimeter. I only have about 8 feet to go until they're out of my yard, so in a few weeks if you see a lady with a cart full of cinnamon at Sam's, it's probably me, or maybe someone else who has heard if this crazy idea, it could happen right?  :)

Ha! This is a funny post. I do sound a little crazy with the cinnamon :)

Apple