The Weeds! The Weeds!

   When Kaz and I got back from two weeks away our land resembled an untended farm in upstate New York. It's quite remarkable - a second straight year of Big Weed after Big Monsoon.
  Looking around the town it's clear that Oracle residents have adopted a variety of strategies in response. They very widely, running the gamut from the "let it grow/do nothing" position on the one hand to the "blade and grade" position on the other. In the vast middle are the rest of us, anxiously eye balling to our neighbors, hoping to avoid the humiliation of being judged slackers on the weed front.  Not to mention hoping to reduce fire risk after the potential fuels dry out.
  During weed season someone is always firing up some sort of gas powered engine to have a go at the growth.  They range from heavy equipment like tractors and riding mowers down to tinker toy corded and/or battery powered hand held line trimmers.
  The tradeoffs are obvious because the tinker toys don't pollute and the gas guzzlers do.  But the tinker toys can't deal with Big Weed very well and take forever on the small stuff.  And anyway there are plenty of options in between to which most of us resort.

   Weed whacking has its own language and skill set.  (Do you use an 80 or a 95 (that's short for .08 line vs. .095 line)?  Stihl, Husquvarna, Echo, Other?  Mower or rolling line trimmer? Switch to battery operated?  Powerful enough? Hire anybody when overwhelmed?  Who?  How much?  Bump line or auto feed?  Measure the trim line or guesstimate?  Newfangled head or the old reliable?  On and on through a hodgepodge of questions and answers.
  There's some folks around town I won't talk politics with, but weeds?  Everybody can safely weigh in on weeds and get right down in there with them.  Which is what I've been doing a lot of lately.