Weeds
As good citizens we all feel proud when we make the effort to keep our yards safe so visitors someone reading our utility meters won’t be injured while visiting. We may even go out and sweep up a broken bottle for the road or off the sidewalk in front of our homes. We trim our lawns and even plant attractive plants and flowers to enhance our neighborhoods. If a dead animal showed up on our lawn we wouldn’t leave it there to rot. We would either bury it or call an animal control agency to dispose of it properly.
Am I correct? We are all good citizens, aren’t we? At least most of the time, right? It is our responsibility as good citizens to rid the land, of which we are the stewards, of bad things, right?
Now drive around the hillsides of Astoria and tell me why no one is doing anything about all the Japanese Knot Weed growing in town. Can there be a land owner that does not know this is a dangerous invasive weed? It is right up there with Scotch Broom, Ivy and Tansy. These are some pretty serious weeds that can do a lot of damage to our local environment.
Land owners, please take a good look at your property and eradicate plants that shouldn’t be there.
Japanese Knot Weed is a tall plant that has leaves similar to the leaves of a bean plant. It is in flower right now and you can see it growing on Niagra, 7th St down from Peter Pan, Irving out by the second bridge, West Lexington. It’s all over and it’s really bad.
And while you are at it, if you see ivy growing up one of your trees, please get rid of that as well. By the way, these plants need to be poisoned or if you pull them up in the case of ivy, you need to burn it, or it will come back where ever you dump it. Pulling up Knot Weed will not help. That needs to be poisoned.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 5:12 AM
9 Comments:
Coming soon to a wetland near you...PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE. Now isn't that an evocative name conjuring up images of a mispent well spent youth of waking up with your nameless lady friend and a treatable STD. Ahh... the good old days...
Guy - your blog is changing the world in ways that you cannot imagine. Think pebble in a pond and the ripple effect. You have accomplished what my vegetarian wife has been trying to do for years - I no longer eat fast food burgers from a thousand cows.Think of the repurcussions...Thanks Bhud...I mean Bud! Good job!
Moosehead, If your wife reads this I'll have to stop telling you to send her away to visit her sister so you can get work done around the house and cover up your mistakes before she sees them upon her return.
We have purple loosestrife here as well and butterfly bush. It drives me craze that people don't rid their property of this stuff. I have 10 arces and I constantly go out to assess and irradicate weeds. I just put in about 4 acres of pasture last year. I started with bare ground,I limed and seeded it last fall and it is growing nicely, but I walk it every couple of weeks and have already pulled up thousands of scotchbroom plants. I just don't understand how someone with a quarter acre can't do the same.
Thanks for the compliment on the blog. It makes me very happy to know that it is making some impact on some level, somewhere. Were you off mass produced meat before you read the BSE/CJD article?
http://astoria-rust.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-beef-is.html
Nope.
Man this blog server or my computer pisses me off sometimes especially when I write and then try to post only to lose the text!!!
Now what did I say...oh yeah. Missed your entry on metrification and have had the light come on in regards to your comment re plagerism. And here I was pleading guilty to paraphrasing from Wikipedia. Sort of reminds me of the fellow in the southern part of the province who last week saw a narc helicopter landing in the field adjacent to his house. He promptly pulled out his pot plant and growing gear and trucked over to the chopper and turned himself in. Problem was that the narcs had spotted a large grow operation some distance away and landed on this field because it was the only available place. At least they had some sense of justice and they let him off with a smile and a slap on the wrist. Lesson learned...when you think you are caught deny deny deny. Damn...now if only Bush would loosen up, Canada could go ahead and legalize weed without fear of invasion by the ultra right "christian" conservatives.
Blogger is a bitch at times, growing pains. Had you logged in early yesterday you would have seen Oh Canada posted 4 times. Took me a half hour to delete the extra posts. For lon replies I compose in word, copy and paste.
Bloggers, problematic as it may be is the best show in town as far as good looks and ease of use and commenting.
So you say Wikipedia is now plagerizing me, too. Bastards...rat bastards, but then I borrow photos from the net so I guess it all evens out.
And, dude, you should be laying off smoking pot at your age, but I have nothing against eating it. Brownies anyone?
Oh for heavens sake!
this is a dangerous invasive weed? It is right up there with Scotch Broom, Ivy and Tansy. These are some pretty serious weeds that can do a lot of damage to our local environment.
What are the dangers?
I'll give you invasive and maybe these 4 are a pain in the ass, but dangerous?
OK tansey, if live stock eat it they die.
Ivy will kill a tree making them prone to falling in a wind storm and also ruining the commercial potential for logging that tree. So all those lovely trees that the city was trying to certify on Williamsport road will be worthless in another ten years.
Next Scotch broom and Japaneese Knot Weed are rather shallow rooted, and they out compete and choke out deeper rooted native plants that keep mudslides from happening. Doesn't Astoria have a slide problem? Think it going to get better on it's own? These plants have no natural predation so they will replace browse for deer and other animals. Goats like scotch broom though, but I don't see a lot of goats in Astoria.
Though purple loosestrife and butterfly bush may be pretty, they too out compete the native plants.
I wonder if this Knot Weed is anything like the wretched Kudzu that afflicts our area.
No, and hopefully it will never be that bad.
Thanks for the link, Rich. I found some ivy on the ground that was starting to go up the trees a few years ago. I pulled it up in the winter, it too is short rooted, and I burned it all in a burn barrel. I haven't seen any since. You would be surprised how much you can pull up in an afternoon. But check back over the next few years because if any scrap is left behing it will re-propigate.
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