Frugal Friday: Weed killer

I've been spending a lot of time, money, and energy trying to get the outside of our house whipped into shape. Unfortunately, we have weeds just about everywhere. I looked at various weedkillers in the store and just couldn't bring myself to pay so much money for the amount of the stuff I'd go through. So I mixed up my own version for pennies. You'll need:

Salt (as much as you can get to dissolve in your water)
Hot water (about 3 gallons)
Dish soap (a teaspoon or so)

Simply dissolve the salt into the water and add the dish soap. The soap helps the briny solution stick to the plant, and the salt is a desiccant that dries out the plant. Spray it as close to the roots as you can for maximum effect. It might take a day or so for the roots to really absorb the salt, but should pull out easily (I scrape them up with a flat shovel) once the plant starts to look dried out and crispy. A few notes about this recipe:

- It is not selective and will kill ANY plant, so don't use it around your prize-winning roses.
- It has the potential to poison the soil for several years (depending on your salt concentration), so this is best used for cracks in the sidewalk and driveway, or any other place you don't want anything growing.
- It will probably work best if there hasn't been rain for a couple of days, and rain isn't expected for the next day or so. If the weeds are thirsty they'll absorb more of the saltwater, and the concentration of salt will stay higher without rain.

I think the best part of this is that I don't have to worry about tracking any chemicals into the house. Clara and Zibby spend too much time on the floor for me to risk that!

Business up front

Now that it's summer, we're finally getting pleasant spring temperatures instead of the summer weather we had during spring. Thanks, global warming. Time to get into the yard!

I'd been waffling over what to do with our front flower bed. Because we live in an historic district, we don't have the setback that modern subdivisions have, so no real front lawn. Our front steps run right to the sidewalk, leaving a 6' x 18' strip of grass/weeds to one side. I've wanted hydrangeas forever, so hydrangeas I shall have! To make my hydrangea dreams come true, I had to remove my irises:


They were in desperate need of division, so I did that. I ended up with 44 plants! My mother-in-law mentioned a few months ago that she wanted to try some purple flowers in her yard, so I gave her several divisions. The remainder will be replanted somewhere in the yard, as soon as I figure out where. There was also some bishop's weed living in the bed:


I haven't found it to be particularly invasive or troublesome, and I think the foliage is pretty, so I moved it to the side yard on the other side of the front steps. I spent some time pulling out other weeds from that area and wouldn't mind this stuff taking over instead. May the best weed win!

Once the area was cleared of grass and weeds, I broke up the soil and added a couple bags of compost. The hydrangeas (whose pots I soaked in buckets of water while I was doing the site prep) then got planted and mulched.

Homigo hydrangea

Hopefully they'll eventually grow wide enough to touch each other

Within minutes of being planted, several people stopped to tell me how wonderful they look! I just hope my green-thumbed luck continues and they keep looking great all summer. After waiting 6 months for my bulbs to bloom, I was happy for some instant gratification with the hydrangeas!

We also (almost) finished trimming the front bed with bricks. I have yet to determine what else I'll be planting, but all of the grass will eventually be removed. I thought the bricks would make a nice edging material along the sidewalk, and we certainly had plenty laying around to do the job!


Clearly we have some weeding to do (this part has been done for a month or more), but we're pretty happy with how it turned out! The sidewalk makes a 45-degree turn to meet the house at the bay window, leaving a gap where the bricks change directions. In this area we'll pour a little bit of concrete.


It'll be like a keystone and a heck of a lot easier than cutting a brick to fit the space. A monogram or tiny handprint may or may not show up in the cement.

Frugal Friday

Regardless of the state of the economy, being frugal is always wise. I'll leave the big items to Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, but every Friday I'll share one small thing I do that eases the purse strings a little bit. It's not house progress (yeah, we're working on it), but maybe it'll keep my mom from assuming I'm dead because I haven't updated in weeks.

The inaugural Frugal Friday tip is an easy one: cook! Even if you're buying groceries at full-price (ha! Who does that?) you'll still come out ahead over eating out. The recipes I use are generally written for 4-6 servings, but I usually don't halve them. Instead, I make the whole recipe and eat the leftovers for lunch during the week. We've always got a steady rotation of yummy homemade things in the refrigerator. This week we've had Spanish rice and enchiladas, Thai curry with chicken, chicken lazone, and chicken and broccoli stir fry. (Can you guess our meat of choice?) My meals work out to about $1 per serving but are often even less than that! An added bonus of cooking at home is that you know exactly what's going into your food and can make healthier substitutions as desired.

Are you the kind of person that burns water? Frozen skillet meals or even microwave meals are still cheaper than grabbing fast food at the end of the day and probably faster!

The American Family Yost

Well, it's been a week and the copper thief has not returned to finish the job. If we can last 10 more days, we probably won't have to worry about it for another year. You see, the likely culprit is being sentenced on June 29 for another string of charges, including 2 class-5 felonies (breaking and entering and possession of criminal tools) and a class-4 felony (theft from an elderly or disabled person). The sad thing is, he's probably pulling off these crimes to not only feed his vices, but also to pay the restitution he owes from yet another conviction. $50,000 can't be an easy amount to come up with, even for a person with a steady job.

It's (almost) too bad that he hasn't returned, because we've been ready. With a defense scheme that lies somewhere between Swiss Family Robinson and Home Alone, we've been sleeping lightly - with our shoes on - and waiting. I won't go into details (I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise in case he does come back), but let's just say that when you live in a construction zone, you've got plenty of scary and dangerous tools at your immediate disposal.

A rude awakening

Two nights ago we woke up to Zibby barking at 2:30 in the morning. We immediately knew something was wrong. He usually doesn't bark in the middle of the night, so Tom went down to investigate. Turns out the freon lines to our air conditioners were cut to drain out all the refrigerant. This is the same thing that happened last year - the lines were cut and then the coils were stolen a few days later. We have our alarm system hooked up to the heat pumps to prevent theft. The security system was armed and the line was cut, but the alarm did not go off. Made me wonder if we could get the security company to compensate the repair cost.

We called the police and had a report made. Tom had seen a guy walking down the street when he went out to see what was going on and gave the police officer a description. The officer told us that some guy he personally had arrested last year for copper theft just got out of prison in the past month and Tom's description matched his. He pulled up a mug shot on his computer in the car, and Tom IDed him with about 75% certainty.

We had the security company come out to figure out what the problem was and repair the cut line. It turns out the thief has some kind of knowledge of security systems. He spliced together the wires in such a way that closed the circuit and caused it not to trip. I don't know all the technical details, but it's now fixed to where that can't happen anymore. So on the one hand, the thief bypassed the security system which would have gone off if he'd simply cut the line. On the other hand, why did they install such a vulnerable system to begin with? Does this change anything in regards to the security company's monetary responsibility?

What I do know is this:

Zibby's a good boy.

It was nice while it lasted

All the flowers in the raised bed are done for the season. The last of the tulips puttered out about a week ago. At the same time, my one peony bud finally bloomed!

Mme Calot peony

Peonies take about three years to establish, so I was happy with even the one bloom. Unfortunately, an afternoon hail storm two days later reduced it to a pile of petals on the ground. Luckily the two rose bushes have taken over the spotlight to detract from the now empty flowerbed.

My first bouquet of the season, on my nightstand

This is the rose bush that the previous owner told me was 100 years old. It's probably not quite that old, but it is old and very profuse. In the three years we've owned the house, I've never done a thing to them. The ghost of Miss Kitta must be looking after them for me!

Looking back, it was pretty funny

I had been waiting for a rain-free, warm day to get materials from Lowe's for the closet organizer I designed. The only way to get the plywood home was to have them cut it to size in-store and have it hanging out the back window (which is why it needed to be rain-free and warm). All the planets aligned yesterday and I was excited to get the project started. I asked an employee for help, and he told me that I had to pay for the wood before they could cut it. So I copied down the item number and checked out at the front of the store. Back to the lumber department. I asked another employee for help again, and he told me that the saw was broken, and that I didn't have to pay for the wood in advance. Apparently one of their highly-trained staff had cut through the power cord with the saw.

Yeah, let that one sink in.

Back to the front of the store to the return desk, where I return a purchase made 10 minutes earlier that I never had possession of. I explained to the girl what happened, and she said, "Oh, really? They do that all the time."

God bless capitalism.