I’ve decided I’m going to war against nutsedge. Not on a grand scale, just in what I now call the north fence garden. The problem I have is that the garden is currently mostly bare dirt and that’s just an invitation for everything to come grow. I can dig up the nutsedge as I dig up the coastal bermuda. Of course, there are poison options, but I’ve always preferred pulling and digging as my weed control option, even when I had a lawn in the suburbs.

I’m fond of expressing my appreciation for native plants, and castigating invasives but I wonder now if that language is appropriate or even helpful. Before the advent of humans, I’m fairly certain plants moved from place to place born on the wind or in the guts of birds or animals as seeds. That’s how any island developed its biosphere. So, no plant springs whole cloth from the ground. They just get somewhere. Like it. And grow.

When is a weed a weed? Answer. When you decide it is. This is particularly true when you like plants from the wild. Because almost every weed flowers and sometimes they look nice in the garden. And native plants are usually ones you find growing in the wild although I don’t believe I’ve ever run across a salvia greggi in the wild. Although maybe I just haven’t been looking. In the end, it comes down to taste and your willingness to pay attention.

It was a good Father's Day. I got calls from the two children far away, and had a great evening talk and walk with my son next door. We looked at plants, talked about trees, and discussed the shape of gardens. In the afternoon I watched the US Open. The only man to shoot under par won it, and he had to do it with a 64 foot putt on the final hole in the rain. It was wonderful to watch.

I like to look down when I walk because that’s where the flowers are. Yesterday, as I walked through a patch of tall grass and wildflowers on my back lots, I noticed a flower I'd never seen before, Wingpod purslane. It has a pretty little bloom that runs and hides when the sun gets too high. I think today I’ll try to gather some of its seeds to keep it around, maybe move it to the front yard gardens.

It’s the Army’s birthday today, and there’s a parade. In a cost conscious, budgeting cutting world, however, I wonder why we’re spending millions of dollars to drive tanks through downtown Washington D.C. to celebrate. Then we’re going to spend millions of dollars fixing the damage to the roads. To me, and I’m just an old guy, in the boondocks of Texas, it seems it might have been wiser to continue funding Alzheimer research and leave the tanks at home. Let the troops march, because that’s what troops do, but I don’t need to see the hardware.

We’ve gone from a dry May to a wet June here in the Hill Country and it feels good. Not real sure how long it will last, but it’s here and I’ll take it. There’s a fog on the hills south of town, and a heavy dew on the grass this morning. Everything is green and anything that needs water is putting on new growth, even the Mountain Laurels are in on the game.

There was a time when a nine a.m. appointment would have hardly deterred me from my daily writing. But that time is long past. I am now perfectly content to let the writing slide for a day or even two. It happened yesterday. My back is wonky and I needed my massage therapist to lay hands upon me. The appointment was at 9 a.m. So, I drank my coffee, tidied up the bedroom, and made the drive. No writing was done. This morning there is still soreness, but I am much improved and a larger disaster averted.

Woke up this morning to a house full of thrown breakers which opens up a range of technical mysteries I am ill prepared to address. I can only assume some strange slug of power came down the line last night as I slept. All the breakers are back in place and nothing seems amiss so it’s unlikely I’ll find a dead raccoon in the attic although I suppose I should walk around and look.

Spent most of yesterday honing my small engine repair chops. The activity centered around the carburetor that belonged to my pressure washer. Inactivity had left it clogged with rust and varnish which was the discovery I made after dismantling it. In a sort of truth-in-lending statement, I’ll admit my youngest son helped, because he’s way better at the task than I. Still, I learned something. Mostly, I need to fire up the pressure washer more often, and then drain the gas when not in use.

I think schools should bring back home economics and shop (or some variation) and make them required classes for everyone. They should also throw in a life skills class which talks about having and raising children and learning to deal with sickness and death. When I look back on my life, I was woefully unprepared to have children, raise them, and to figure out how to deal with illness and the loss of a loved one. It was sheer dumb luck that I managed to figure any of it out with any degree of success, and there might be arguments still about that.

Another thread from the tapestry of my life is gone. Our friend Nancy Laura breathed her last this past Thursday. There will be no more tales to tell and stories to weave. No more trips to the river, nights by the fire, dances at parties, laughs and hugs. I’ll have to make do with pictures on the wall and a head full of memories. And that’s a tale as old as time.

Today is June 6. The Anniversary of D-Day and it’s odd to think that today, in the 21st century, 81 years later, it’s probably better remembered as a scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan than it is as a real scene from the lives of mothers and fathers who actually lived through it or fought and died in it. Of course, that feels pretty normal since the same thing happened with the Civil War and Gone with the Wind. Memories fade, wounds heal, and movies need scripts.

Memory is a tricky thing. I’m fairly certain I once owned a book titled The Music of the Spheres. I bought it for some English Lit class. I think. Heck, that was in the 70s. So, it’s likely my memory is faulty, but I still have most of my English Lit books because, well, I like books. But a quick search of my library was to no avail. So, it’s likely the little paperback disappeared somewhere in one of the moves.

Storms have rumbled around the Hill Country all night, mostly to the west and north. The tail of one of them is dragging across me even as I write this morning. But it’s light and I doubt anything very heavy will fall. That’s okay. We’ve had a decent couple of weather weeks. And a half inch or so of another gentle rain is nice. I’m sure the plants and trees are in heaven, because everyone is putting on new duds in the form of foliage.

Software. Well behaved in most cases. It will do exactly what you tell it to do. Unless… Hidden in the code is the little trick that always says, unless. My work experience taught me that syntax is everything. If you phrase the command or request correctly, magic happens. Add a space. Add a dot. Ask the wrong question. And the machine just stares at you. 

I had a wandering day yesterday. Drove to Luckenbach. Listened to music. Drove to Fredericksburg. Listened to music. At both places I ran into friends. We talked, shared stories, and drank a beverage or two. It was a warm day, but in the shade with a breeze, it felt nice to be outside amongst the living. There was even talk of plans, of things to do, and places to go. It was the sort of day that gave you hope there would be other days like it to come.

I just saw a story that people coming out of college with degrees in computer science are having a hard time finding jobs. It appears we might have oversold the opportunities. And artificial intelligence is playing a role as well. Because it also appears the programmers might have programmed themselves right out of a job, or at least the sort of job Artificial Intelligence seems to do pretty well which is the grunt work.

There’s a story in the June issue of the Atlantic asking if American Pop Culture is in decline. I read it, but a debate is not worth the time because it seems to me that decline is hardwired into any form of popular culture. Things come. Things go. Tastes change. And a desire to talk about it critically is usually someone shilling for something he or she likes, and acting as though it can be measured and evaluated against standards. As though there’s an ideal to which we should strive.

Let’s mutter around some more in the gardens and talk about blackfoot daisies. I’ve got them planted in four spots, and they’re doing amazingly well, especially since the recent rains have fallen, and we got another inch last night. I set them up to get the soft morning sun then afternoon shade. The soil is well drained although it might be too rich for them. I’d like them to become a fixture and now that I’m once again spending time with the plants, maybe that can happen.