The Grim Weeder

Timothy Price23 Comments
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The Grim Weeder with his new weed whacker.

I’ve been whacking weeds by hand for many years. You can see when I made a super weed whacker at https://photos.tandlphotos.com/blog/2016/8/whacky. But now I’ve developed “golf elbow”, which is quite painful, from all the years of manual weed whacking. About a month ago or so I bought a STIHL FSA 90R commercial grade battery powered weed whacker. We have very tough weeds and I knew I needed a commercial weed whacker to do the job. The FSA 90R came with 0.95 inch diameter orange string (shown below), and the first “tough” weed I tried to whack with it broke the string. The tough weed simply laughed at me. “Hahahahaha! You with your wimpy, weakling whacker can’t touch me!” I took the head apart, got more string out and tried whacking some weeny weeds, which it worked pretty well on. Over the past month, I’ve been whacking weeny weeds, which we have lots of, while the tough weeds laughed at me. I finally ran out of the orange string.

I did a bit of research and found the Oregon 22-895 Magnum Gatorline .095 inch trimmer line was highly rated as really touch line for really tough weeds. 22-895 Magnum Gatorline is square, which somehow makes more resistant to breaking.  I found the best deal was a large spool with 600 feet of of line. I loaded my spool with the 22-895 Magnum Gatorline, and went out and whacked that sassy tough weed that’s been laughing at me for the past month. I’m happy to report, the weed is not laughing any longer, because the weed and all its buddies are no more. The 22-895 Magnum Gatorline ripped through them like they were butter.

Today I set out whacking all the weeds out of the irrigation ditches. The FSA 90R with the 22-895 Magnum Gatorline and I had to work really hard, but after six hours and 4 recharges on the battery, I got the ditches whacked and weed free.

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Orange and square gatorline.
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600 feet of square gatorline

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Great clouds built up in the afternoon.
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Portion of irrigation ditch before weed whacking.
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Same portion of irrigation ditch after weed whacking.

Birding

Timothy Price13 Comments

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Laurie: Do these binoculars need to be cleaned?
Me: Can you see through them?

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Laurie: I see a colorful Bird through his dirty windshield.

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Me: They don’t need to me cleaned then.

Unicorn Sparkle

Timothy Price14 Comments
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Silver: “Unicorn Sparkle lip balm?”
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Paparazzo: “It’s Mongo Kiss shimmering lip balm.” Silver:  “You want me to sparkle up my kisser with Mongo Kiss? You’re crazy paparazzo!”
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Spunk: “Ooh! Mongo Kiss Unicorn Sparkle. I love this stuff!”

Badgers

Timothy Price28 Comments

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We haven’t seen the badgers the last two nights. Either they were foraging farther away from their den, not coming out as early, or they got tired of the attention and moved their den. Their den is roughly 50 feet from the main trail in the bosque that gets a lot of foot, dog, bike and horse traffic. For the couple of times we have seen the badgers they were very cooperative. If you missed the video of the badgers I posted last week, you can watch it at https://wp.me/p1yQyy-4iU.

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Badgers in the Bosque

Timothy Price19 Comments

Leslie, one of our bosque buddies, walked towards me on the ditch bank holding her camera in such a way I knew she got something special. “I got a first for the bosque!” she called out. “A badger” as she showed me a photo of a badger looking over a pile of sand on her camera’s screen. I said “Wow! I didn’t know we had badgers in the bosque.” On Friday afternoon I walked through the bosque and found the badger’s burrow, but the sun was still fairly high, and I didn’t see any badgers.

Last night I went out at sunset, and found a mama badger and two large badger cubs playing and foraging around the entrance to their den. I started shooting video with a 320mm lens. I was about 50 to 75 feet from the badgers.  One cub at the entrance of the den saw me and watched me while its sibling romped and tugged at it. I moved to a better position, because the camera kept trying to focus on the foliage in the foreground. While one cub watched me, its sibling hadn’t noticed I was there, and started foraging on the edge of the sandhill. Likewise, mama badger was oblivious while I filmed her and her cubs. The cub playing on the edge of the mound suddenly noticed me, stopped, stared at me for an instance, and then ran to the den and dived in the hole. The mama ran up the the entrance of the den at the cub’s sudden activity, and acting slightly confused, she put her head down toward the hole. All of a sudden she shifted her position and looked at me as if the cubs said “Mama! There’s a paparazzo filming us.” She looked at me for a second, and then dove in the hole herself.

I started calling them and I believe the cub that was looking at me from the beginning, popped its head up and stared at me. I talked to it, told it I was okay. It ducked back into the hole, only to pop it’s head up again a few seconds later. It seemed fascinated by the paparazzo in black talking to it. It started getting dark, so I said my goodbyes and the cub stared at me halfway in the entrance to the den as I walked away.

I wrote and recorded the music accompanying the video this afternoon. The Badgers seemed worthy of their own song.