Barefoot and happy

Our backyard has a nice lawn. It's not a very big lawn, but it is covered by grass that is very pleasant to walk over or lie on. There are no weeds in it, especially the prickly variety. I can walk around barefoot all day and never feel something intruding into the skin of my foot.

Not so the verge. When I take the bins out once a week, I usually wheel them down to the front of the house with no shoes on. This involves walking on the grassy verge, and the verge by comparison is now almost entirely weeds from one end to the other. That's not for want of trying. I have sprayed it several times with a weed and feed type concoction, but to no effect.

I get the feeling that my weed and feed stuff is not being sucked into the water jet the way it is supposed to. I bought a big bottle of stuff that you connect to your hose, poke a few holes in the bottle, then you turn the tap on and as the water rushes past the top of the bottle, it draws out and mixes the weed killer and sprays it on your skin with wild abandon.

The first bottle of stuff like this that I purchased worked admirably. It was gone in no time, and the lawn was soon looking marvelously healthy and weed free. It did not lack for suction.

This next bottle is from a different company. By now, it should be empty, but only a few inches are missing from the top. It certainly shouldn't be applied in a lower concentration, so I fear it is just not as sucky as it should be.

I came up with a solution yesterday, and that was to buy a big watering can and to mix this stuff up into a solution with water, and walk around distributing it by hand. Which is so 1930's, but I presume it will actually work. Unless it disolves the plastic watering can, which is therefore not really a can at all. I love how mad inventors come up with these labour saving ideas, which work just enough to make you throw away your existing watering cans, and are just succesful enough to prevent you from buying a new one for 1-2 years, but in the end produce nothing but a verge overrun with prickles.

It could be though that these sucky-top bottles are produced by watering can manufacturers. We might all have to revert to them shortly, since watering lawns with hoses appears to be going the way of the Dodo.